Anah Crow Exiled to Paradise The Nine of Pentacles

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

Torquere Press

www.torquerepress.com

First published in www.torquerepress.com, 2010

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Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

CONTENTS

* * * *

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles
By Anah Crow

* * * *

Anyel sat under the heavy, twisted boughs of a palta tree,

watching five little boys and a barking, street dog playing
soldiers in the ruined foundation of a plantation slave
dormitory. Their gleeful shouts and the hearty crack of stout
sticks coming together brought back memories of his own
childhood. Of all the things he'd dreamed of being, what he
was had never occurred to him. Monk. Teacher. Gardener.
Exile.

The wind was warm and green and salty, coming up off the

weed-clotted tide pools and warming on the stony shore until
it rose to the lush gardens of Anyel's adopted home. The
smell was familiar, and pleasant, but Anyel longed for the
crisp smell of pine and fresh water and wood smoke. He
rested his head back on the palta trunk and let his fingers
move over the fishing net he was mending, slipping the worn,
wooden shuttle back and forth to knot fresh mesh over a hole
torn by a curious whale calf.

Anyel rarely fished, but he mended nets for anyone who

needed the help, since his time went to waste during the fish
runs when there were no children to teach. As a monk, he
had nothing of his own: no home, no boat, no garden, not
even his clothes. Even his duties, in the end, belonged to
Lochan.

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

Anyel liked to keep busy. It kept him from thinking about

why he was here, which was where his mind went every time
he let it out to wander around without a task. After two
decades, he should have given up on the subject, but he was
still wondering what had happened that he'd ended up here in
the first place.

He'd been young, and far from celibate, with more money

and libido than he'd known what to do with. And he'd been in
love. They'd been in love, he thought, he and Quin. The
future had stretched out in front of him like a storybook
waiting to be written. He had been freshly freed from his
tutors and minders, just come of age, and he'd been in love
with the most eligible man in the country for five years.

Five years was an eternity. He'd gone from boy to man

with his heart twined with Quin's, Quin who looked every inch
the young royal, a prince in waiting with just enough years
left in the king's life that they could live like wild things for a
full lifetime, and Quin could take his place right before they
grew old and jaded.

"I'll have to marry," Quin had said one day when they

were lying on a mountain slope, crushed, flowering
strawberries under their bare bodies, a perfect pale sky
above.

"I could wear a dress," Anyel had offered, and they'd both

laughed like a pair of marsh dogs, scaring the thrushes into
the sky with their noise.

"It'll only be if it's the best for the country, of course,"

Quin had said, when they'd caught their breath.

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

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"Of course," Anyel had agreed. He'd rolled over to look

down at Quin's smile. "I hope she's not ugly, though," he'd
added generously.

"Why do you care?" Quin had slapped Anyel's bare

backside so that it stung. "You'll only be looking at me, like
always."

"For the good of the country," Anyel had protested. Taking

care of Quin would be his duty some day.

For the good of the country. It was what the scrawled

letter from Quin had said, the one that had been left for Anyel
in the care of the Abbot at Bisera's ancient little Abbey of
Lochan. Men came for him in the dark of night to take him
from his mother's home; they'd come in under the royal seal,
Anyel assumed, since there had been no resistance but his. A
knock to his head had ended what protest he could muster.
He'd never even made it to his sword, not that he'd ever cut a
man with it.

Anyel had believed the letter when he'd pulled on the

coarse monks' robes for the first time. The King was dead,
and gods and mercies only knew what troubles faced Quin at
the time. Part of him still believed it, a tiny pearl of folly
formed around a grain of truth trapped in his closed heart.
Quin had married in haste to strengthen the loyalty of the
armed forces, his cousin once removed, a Duchess. She had
been, as Anyel had hoped, not ugly. She had also been twelve
years old.

A wail startled Anyel out of his thoughts, and he dropped

the shuttle and the twine. The ball went rolling downhill as
Anyel scrambled to his feet, gathering up his robes so they

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

wouldn't tangle around his ankles. It took him another
moment to locate the source of the distress, when a second
wail rose from far back in the foundation ruins, under a veil of
honeysuckle.

"Children!" Anyel called for them as he took the crumbling

steps down into the ruin. The little dog came bounding over a
knee-high wall.

"Pere Anyel!" Leggy little Filito was only a step behind, his

face ashy under a layer of yellow dust. "The shadows, the
shadows have eaten Cleto! Mando pushed him into the dark
and he can't get out."

"The shadows don't eat people." Anyel hitched up his robes

and vaulted the wall. Footprints led through half a doorway,
and he could just see three guilty little dark heads bobbing
away beyond the honeysuckle and into the palta grove. He
should have kept a closer eye on them: Mando and Alviz were
forever being too rough on the poor children, and Naldi was
too simple to do anything but follow.

"They did, they did!" Filito's little feet and four little dog

paws scrabbled along in Anyel's wake. "He was on the wall
and Alviz dared him and then Mando pushed him and the
shadows ate him up."

Anyel could hear Cleto's brave snuffling drifting out from

somewhere. The older boy never cried; his rough, fisherman
father would have given him something to cry about.

Here, where the ground rose up to hold up the foundation

walls, the honeysuckle spilled over into the back of the old
cellar. Anyel could see the broken fronds where Cleto had

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

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fallen through, but there was no reason the boy couldn't just
stand up.

"Cleto, did you hurt your leg?" Anyel called. "Can you get

up?"

"No, my arm. And I am up, Pere... it's dark."
Anyel knew where the boy was. His mother's father's

estate, built back in the dark eras, had a level below the
cellars, too, even in the servant quarters. Dungeons and,
worse, oubliettes for punishing the disobedient.

"Filito, give me your stick."
"It's a sword," Filito said, stubborn even in the face of a

crisis, but he handed it over anyway.

"Stay where you are, Cleto." Anyel prodded through the

spill of greenery with the stick. Stone, stone, stone, stone...
wood. The sullen thud said the wood was thick, but time and
rain would have worked together to eat through it. Anyel
pushed hard and felt the wood give like a dry sponge. He
handed the stick back to Filito. "You've fallen into an old cell."

Anyel tore away the honeysuckle with his bare hands,

cursing silently that he wasn't allowed a blade. The door set
in the floor was revealed, broken through in one corner. "Step
away from the light, Cleto. Filito." Anyel gestured toward the
far end of the door. "Go hit the stone over there and call
Cleto's name, to keep him away from the door when I open
it."

Puffed up with the seriousness of his task, Filito scampered

away to obey. The little dog followed, skirting the door, and
threw itself down on its belly on the stone, adding its urgent
yaps to Filito's voice.

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

"There's a wall, Pere," Cleto called.
"Stand close to it, then." The iron ring in the door was still

whole, thick enough that Anyel could grasp it with both
hands. He could only hope the lock had corroded.

Anyel might not have trained to fight in twenty years, but

in any given year, he cut stone, broke fields, felled trees,
hauled nets, and built boats and houses. Work was prayer. He
tugged hard and the lock yielded. Unfortunately, so did the
hinges and the strapping. The door came to pieces on the
second pull, the metal screeching as it tore, and the whole of
it plunged down into the dark below. If Cleto had been below,
he would have been crushed.

"Cleto?" Anyel's heart was pounding so that his ribs hurt.
There was a spate of coughing from below and from Filito.

"I'm here," Cleto said thickly. The dog sneezed.

"Let's get you out." As the dust cleared, Anyel could see

that the cell below was just a little more than the height of a
grown man.

"My arm, I can't..." Cleto was saying as Anyel jumped

down into the cell, landing safely on a whole piece of the
door. It rocked slightly, but held steady.

"Come." Anyel held out his hand. "Filito, help Cleto up."
Cleto, in spite of being one-handed, had managed to

clamber up Anyel's back and grab Filito's hand to get out, and
Anyel was heaving himself up and out when men's voices
carried through the palta grove.

"Pere Anyel?" That was Sabin, the foreman of the estate,

Filito's father. At least Mando and Alviz had the decency to
send help after fleeing the scene.

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

"All is well." Anyel wiped his forehead with his dusty

sleeve. He was pouring sweat under the coarse brown cloth.
"The boys found an old oubliette."

"Cleto broke his arm, Papa," Filito chirped. "Mando pushed

him and he fell and the shadows ate him, but then Pere Anyel
found him."

"Broken arm?" Sabin appeared at the top of the wall,

looking down. "Is that so, Pere?"

Anyel cursed in his head. If Cleto's father found out, he'd

make trouble with Mando's father, and that meant trouble
between the farmers and the fishers, and it might mean Cleto
would be forbidden from taking classes with the children of
the farmers and merchants. "I'll have to check to know."
Anyel gave Sabin and the two workers behind him a narrow
look.

Cleto was clutching his arm; his wrist and hand hung at a

terrible angle. Even the dog could tell it was broken. Still,
Sabin nodded. "Of course, Pere. You'll know best."

Anyel held out his hands and, trusting, Cleto laid his

broken arm across Anyel's palms with only a whimper. "Let's
see if it's really broken, shall we?" Anyel said gently. He could
feel the wrongness in the boy's arm as clearly as he could see
it.

"Yes, Pere," Cleto whispered.
Anyel concentrated, drawing a few leather thongs in his

mind's eye and pushing them down into the broken bones,
bringing the ends together and binding them with knots the
same way he mended the nets with his hands. When he ran

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

his hands over Cleto's arm again, it was whole. He could
sense the break still, but it would mend in a few days.

"It seems well enough. Not broken. But he could have

been seriously hurt," Anyel said, looking up at Sabin.

"I can see that now, Pere," Sabin said solemnly. He bowed

his head and the other men made the sign of the watchful eye
on their sweat-beaded brows. "I'll be back later to board up
that hole. Come, Filito. Cleto has to rest now."

"But it was broken," Filito protested as he scrambled up

the wall. His father bent and lifted him up the rest of the way
by the back of his shirt.

"You're a child," Sabin chided. "Pere says it's not broken,

it's not broken. Come on. I have work for you."

"What about Pepy?" Filito looked over his shoulder at the

little dog rolling in the dust.

"There's enough flea-bitten critters for you to fuss with at

home," Sabin said, sending Filito on ahead with a smack on
the backside. "Get on."

Anyel watched them go before turning to Cleto, who was

rubbing his arm and watching his fingers move with some
amazement. "Does anything else hurt?"

"Not so much. Pere..." Cleto held out his arm, his face full

of wonder. "Did you..."

"Hush." Anyel put an arm around his shoulders and

steered him back toward the half-standing doorways that let
out of the ruins. "If you've got two good hands, you can help
me mend nets until the moon fills in two days. I'm behind and
can't get all these nets done in time for the next run if I don't
have help."

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

"Yes, Pere." Cleto looked up at him and smiled. "Thank

you, Pere."

"Don't thank me," Anyel said firmly. The last thing he

wanted was any attention. "Say your prayers twice for the
next fortnight."

"Yes, Pere."
As they reached the shade of the palta tree, Cleto ran

ahead to gather up the ball of twine from where it had rolled
away nearly ten paces until it had gotten stuck under a
gnarled root pushing up through the soil. The little dog
barked at the hem of Anyel's robe where it raised dust on the
path.

"What are you complaining about?" Anyel asked it.
It didn't answer; it only ran on to the tree and the knotted

linen napkin that held Anyel's lunch of dried fish, a baked
potato, and a few figs. Barking once more, it flopped belly-
down on the cool earth, nosing the corner of the napkin and
wagging its tail. Anyel's lunch was going to have to feed three
today, it seemed. It was a good thing he'd learned to do
without.

He'd learned to do without food easily enough. Other

things were harder to forego. Anyel heard his knees creak as
he sank back down under the tree and picked up the net.
Busy hands and a busy mind were a cure for anything, he told
himself. An empty stomach would help keep his mind from his
empty heart better still.

* * * *

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

"You only come home when you're hungry," Anyel chided,

looking up at a shadow that passed over his head and circled
the little monastery courtyard.

Anyel slit open a silvery fish with a flick of his wrist and

scraped the entrails out with the blunt edge of the knife on
the way back. The entrails slopped into the basin at his feet
and Anyel chopped the head half off before sliding the knife
down back of the fish to bare the spine. The side fillets peeled
off like the rind of a ripe fruit, leaving head, tail, and bones to
go in the pot.

Anyel tossed the head and bones into a stock pot

simmering over a bed of coals to his left, slapped each fillet in
the basket of coarse salt on the cutting table, and then
threaded the fillets onto thin skewers for the drying rack.

The shadow resolved into a falcon that landed on the

drying rack. Tilting her head to fix Anyel with a gold eye, she
chirped softly.

"Nice to see you've learned to ask." Anyel plucked the liver

from the next fish and tossed it to the falcon. The liver
disappeared in two quick snaps of her beak. "Not too much of
that or it'll thicken your blood." The falcon queried with a
single note. "Well, your heart would stop," Anyel clarified.

That got him a disgruntled, sliding squeal like a

pennywhistle in a child's hands. The falcon fluttered to the
table, eyeing the next head that Anyel pulled free. She trilled
flirtatiously and preened the red-flecked snowy feathers on
her breast.

"Well, all right, then." Anyel laid the head and bones at her

feet. "Flattery will get you anywhere." She was too busy

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

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plucking out the white-filmed, staring fish eyes to answer
him.

Any falcon was sacred to Lochan, the watcher, the god

worshiped at the monastery of Bisera. It was only in the
books of Lochan's priests, and in the memories of a few
people like Anyel's mother, that the mysteries were
preserved. Anyel wasn't superstitious, but when he'd found
the falcon tangled in a snare in the palta grove, he'd let
himself take it as a good sign. The abbot said it meant that
things would be made clear to him soon.

Anyel put his mind back to the task before him. His hands

were crossed with long, white lines that marked the times his
mind had wandered. Over the years, he'd become adept at
the task, filling one fish rack after another with stores that
would keep the monastery well-fed through the winter.

Many of the other brothers were out in the vineyard,

spreading the fish entrails from the first day of the fish run on
the hungry clay soil. The sky was full of gray and white
scavenger birds except over Anyel's head. The falcon kept
them at bay. In another day, there would be more monks at
Anyel's task as the fishermen's tithes came in. Anyel
preferred to work alone and he was young, so the older
monks were happy to let him have at the grueling, stinking
chore.

Being alone let him pretend that time wasn't passing, that

it was just yesterday that he'd been "helped" off of a creaking
carack and onto a tar-soaked pier, sick beyond nausea,
empty all the way through. When the wind came up from the

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

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piers, he only shook his hair out of his face. He didn't look
anymore to see what was on the horizon.

Today, the sea would be spattered with sun-bleached sails;

maybe there would be a few capital ships with their huge sails
like patches sewn on the blue seam of the horizon. The island
of Bisera was far from the main shipping route, a poor
paradise visited only rarely by traders and war ships. Pirates
had little use for it; there were no places to hide and the
islanders—farmers and fishers alike—were from pirate stock
themselves and held close the fighting traditions of their
forefathers.

It was the perfect place to disappear.
"Pere Anyel?" Anyel was adept enough with the boning

knife that he didn't flick it the wrong way up his wrist when
he startled at the interruption. The little voice was familiar:
Annit. "I brought what you asked."

Anyel turned, wiping his hands on a rag tucked in his rope

belt. "I thought you'd changed your mind."

"No." The young woman in front of him blushed deeply and

busied herself arranging the folds of the sling that held a fat
baby to her hip. She barely came up to Anyel's shoulder, a
tiny thing with long, black braids, red cheeks, and a round
body swathed in full skirts and blouse and shawl, just like
most of Bisera's women. "I just... I had to speak to Marnyl
about... it."

Anyel had seen her come into the world, had seen her

mother leave it, and had seen all four of her children born.
He'd started studying the mysteries of magic in hopes of
escaping Bisera and being of some use to Quin, enough to

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excuse whatever offense he'd caused. Time and silence had
taught him the folly of that kind of thinking. He'd studied
harder when he found that he could preserve the lives of
simple people like Annit and her husband and her children
with his skills, like he'd mended Cleto's arm and preserved a
little peace days before. Along the way, he'd learned the skills
of surgeon, midwife, dentist, and hedgewitch.

"Give me what you've brought, then."
Annit paused and then caught her breath as the falcon

flitted from the table to Anyel's shoulder. "Here." She was
caught between blushing and staring as she shoved a little jar
and a folded handkerchief holding a few small things into
Anyel's hands. "Marnyl says you're right, that four is enough
for us." Her baby looked over his shoulder at Anyel, as wide-
eyed as his mother.

Anyel was relieved. Too many children grew up motherless

on Bisera and back on the mainland. "I'll have something for
you tomorrow," he promised. "As long as you wear the
charm, you'll not miss your time. And you'll get to pay
attention to the little ones you have. Especially since Marnyl's
got his son now." He stroked the baby's downy head and got
a coo of approval in return.

"Yes." Annit hugged her baby and kissed his cheek. "Isn't

he beautiful?"

"Perfect." Anyel tucked what she'd brought into a pouch at

his waist. "Come back after the boats go out in the morning."

"Yes, Pere." She bobbed a little curtsey, in spite of the

heavy baby weighing her down. "Thank you, Pere." With that,
she scurried off, her sandals raising dust as she pattered

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across the courtyard. The falcon piped curiously in Anyel's
ear.

"Healing takes all forms." Anyel petted her head and down

one wing; his fingers found the small lump in the bone that
marked where her wing had been broken and he scratched
the skin over it gently, knowing how it still itched and
twinged. "Including keeping injury from happening."

The mysteries let him heal, let him understand the falcon,

let him keep Annit from having another babe before she saw
her twentieth summer, let him read the wind and sky and
trees and plants, let him know many things. Anything but
how to get home. Of course he could go back, and he could
risk his life, his family's lives, even the lives of those on
Bisera, and for nothing except to wander his own country like
a revenant. The moment he left, he knew, word would go
winging toward the capital, fast as the falcon, that he had
escaped, and he would be a man hunted.

A loud snore brought Anyel back to himself. He turned

back to the baskets of fish waiting to be filleted and caught a
glimpse of paws and a tail under the table. The fish runs were
a time of plenty for everyone, even little scavenging street
dogs. The little dog snored again, and the falcon whistled her
disdain as she took to the sky, pricking Anyel's shoulder as
she went. Anyel tried not to envy her as he took up the knife
again and went back to the task that was as old as the
monastery itself.

* * * *

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The new moon brought the end of the fish run, and Bisera

lay quietly in the lull between the rush of silver fish and the
ripening of the palta fruit. Anyel's sandals scraped on the
cobblestones as he made his way back up from the city on
the shore, headed for the dark shadow of the monastery
outlined against the indigo sky.

It was a long walk back, longer for the fact that he'd been

keeping watch over an old fisherman's last breaths in a shack
down by the sea. When the scratch and wheeze of the old
man's breath had gone and the only sound still on the night
air was the sigh of the sea and the mournful cry of a sand
runner, Anyel had said the blessings, woken the old woman in
the next house, and left the fisher folk to tend their dead.

The mysteries did nothing to stop death, but that didn't

keep some of the people from asking for Anyel to watch over
their passing. Others would have nothing to do with him.
Anyel never begrudged the requests or the shunning. The
other brothers were happy to stay home and happy to go
forth, just as he was. They had taught him that flexibility. His
rebellious spirit had broken on the sympathetic stone of their
faith.

A stray cobblestone caught the toe of one of Anyel's

sandals and, before he could stop, he felt and heard one of
the straps pop under the strain. On his next step, the sole
slapped against his foot and threatened to trip him up. With a
sigh, Anyel bent to unlace both sandals. It's a blessing to go
barefoot, he heard the abbot say in his head. It reminds us of
what we have the rest of the time we go about shod. Anyel
was wrapping the straps around both sandals before tucking

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

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them into his belt when something exploded in his head. His
vision flared with blinding stars before everything went
blacker than night.

* * * *

Anyel woke in the dark belly of a ship. It took no mysteries

to find that truth. He wracked his aching head to remember
what ships had been in the main port the last time he had
seen it, but could remember nothing but merchant vessels
from the usual provinces and islands. Nothing unusual. He
struggled a little and found himself bound hand and foot, but
whatever he lay on was soft.

Anyel prodded with fingers and toes and, as far as he

could tell, he lay on a bed. His robe was rucked up around his
thighs and his jaw ached from the rope gag that was drawn
so tightly around him that his lips were torn and scabbed. The
sea thumped against the hull, out of rhythm with his heart
and head.

Who would want him? Anyel's fingers twitched as he found

himself making the sign of the watchful eye, as superstitious
as a Biseran peasant. He tried to summon the mysteries, but
his thoughts were so jumbled that he couldn't focus enough
to see his bindings in his mind's eye.

His robe was torn at the shoulder, too, he found, and the

bed on which he lay was so very soft. The last time he had
lain in a bed like this, it had been with Quin. Mercies and
mysteries, he missed Quin. Being a monk was no trial when
his body refused to thrill to any touch for mourning the loss of
Quin's hands and mouth on his skin. A broken head and

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bruised body couldn't move Anyel to tears, but the yearning
that slipped through his moment of weakness made his
breath catch and his eyes sting.

Anyel closed his eyes against the dark. Even though it

made no difference in terms of the blackness he saw, it
helped him turn his sight inward instead of yearning into the
shadows for a hint of light. He breathed slowly, letting his
breath come with the soft stroke of the sea against the hull.
Shifting, he learned the shape of the knots that bound him
and began to unravel the cords around his hands. Once those
were free, he could use his fingers to undo the rest faster
than his mind.

The sound of a key being turned in a lock startled Anyel

into opening his eyes, and then a thin gold line cut the dark,
drawing a door into being. When he twisted to look about, the
graying of a square above his head showed dawn coming
through a thick, leaded glass window. The line widened until a
broad silhouette could fit through the gap, then it narrowed
again and disappeared. This time, though, there was no
sound of the lock. Someone crossed the room and put
something heavy down by the bed.

"Still breathing?" Anyel wracked his mind to put a name to

the man's voice. A shadow bent over him and the thin dawn
light caught on a pocked, rugged profile. The accent was from
the capital, an educated accent on a dry, sarcastic voice;
likely the man was one of Quin's noblemen. "So you are. And
awake. You've still got a thick skull. You'll forgive me for
treating a man of the cloth so harshly. Some things must be
done in secret and some things must be done by blunt tools.

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I've reprimanded the blunt tools in question for cracking your
skull."

Anyel couldn't imagine what someone would want of him

that he wouldn't give freely, but that was something that had
come with time. When he'd been young and green and when
he'd spoken with that same clipped accent, maybe there had
been things he'd have refused if they mattered to the wrong
person. His wrists were almost free enough for him to slip his
hands out of the bonds, so he lay still to hide them.

"I'm going to assume you're not stupid enough to try and

swim for it." A blade grated through his gag, cold steel sliding
against his cheek. "But, in case you are, I'll be giving you a
little jewelry." When the man leaned over to tug the gag
away, fresh daylight caught on a device on his shoulder, a
silver hawk in a wreath of flames pinned to his heavy velvet
coat. Kettyl's Hawk. Quin's cousin. Anyel was so shocked by
the symbol that the man had shackled something around one
of his ankles before he could protest.

Anyel's dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his

jaw ached, but he managed to say, "Berrit."

"The same." Berrit cut the cords binding Anyel's ankles and

straightened. The day had already brightened enough for
Anyel to see him clearly now. He looked terrible. So much
older than Anyel would have guessed, even adding twenty
years onto the last time Anyel had laid eyes on him. He
caught the front of Anyel's robe in one big hand and pulled
Anyel up to sitting, then dumped him sideways. "I thought
you wouldn't be that stupid; maybe I was wrong." He
tweaked the loosened cord from around Anyel's wrists.

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Anyel ignored that, and the indignity of being manhandled,

and struggled to sit up. "You look unwell." His monk's mind
was still caught on that; he'd spent twenty years healing and
mending. Then a puzzle piece fell into place. He'd felt like this
before. You've still got a thick skull. "You brought me to
Bisera?"

"Perceptive. Island air must have been good for your

mind." Berrit crossed the room to where the daylight had
revealed a desk and heavy chair. He sank down to sitting with
a wince. Anyel could see a silvery haze of cold sweat on his
brow.

"Did you choose the place?" All these years, Anyel had

thought Quin had sent him to Bisera as a kindness, that the
manhandling hadn't been part of the plan. At first, he'd hoped
it was so he'd be safe until he was sent for, and later he'd
hoped that Quin at least wanted him to have some comfort.

"Does it matter?"
Anyel realized, with a guilty start, that he'd been in Berrit's

bed all night. Damn Lochan—a god Anyel didn't even believe
in—and the monks and damn Bisera with its common
kindness and rural manners. He was prisoner on a ship bound
for parts unknown, a weight around his ankle that condemned
him to death if the ship foundered, his head was throbbing,
his body ached, his mouth was dry and tasted like blood and
cheap cordage... and still, he felt guilty for keeping a sick
man from his bed, even though that same man was
responsible for his present sorry state and for dumping him
on Bisera to begin with.

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"No," he said at last. It did matter, but it wasn't Berrit's

business. "Where I'm going, that matters." So did water,
food, and a chance to relieve himself, but Anyel was still
trying to gauge Berrit's purpose, and years of asceticism had
taught him to ignore the complaints of his body.

"Oranne." Berrit yanked a drawer open against the protest

of the swollen wood.

Home. Anyel watched blankly as Berrit thumped a heavy-

bottomed crystal glass on the desk and filled it halfway with a
sluggish, opaque red liquid. Some kind of fortified wine,
probably only partly medicinal. "Is this Quin's idea, or your
own?"

"You think I'd be out here like this of my own accord?"

Berrit stopped before taking a drink to laugh at Anyel, then
coughed thickly.

"You shouldn't be here at all, by the look of you." Anyel

leaned over to inspect the weight on his leg. A thick shackle
and four links of chain locked him to an iron-bound polished
stone. He couldn't lift it higher than his knee if he tried to
carry it. Dragging it was going to be the only choice. "I recall
that my accommodations on the first trip were considerably
less pleasant."

"You were a considerably less pleasant person," Berrit

noted. "His Highness didn't specify either time."

That hurt. Anyel breathed through the pain in his chest

and smoothed out his robes. "I apologize for my previous
unpleasantness," he said quietly. "And for denying you use of
your bed." He set his bare feet on the floor and pushed
himself to standing.

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As noble gestures went, Anyel had done better; it seemed

that he wasn't done learning humility. His darkened vision
cleared moments later to reveal that he was half on the floor
and half on Berrit, who was coughing as though his lungs
were loose.

From where he was sprawled, cheek pressed to Berrit's

chest, one of Berrit's arms around him, Anyel could tell Berrit
was more than a little unwell. Damp heat seeped through
Berrit's coat, his breath rattled in his lungs, and as Anyel
looked up in concern, he could see the swell of adenitis in
Berrit's throat under the jaw and the rawness of fresh
pockmarks. Worse, Anyel could feel the sickness coming off of
him in waves.

"You should be in bed." That Anyel could hardly stand was

no hypocrisy; his troubles were temporary. Water, food, and
time would sort him out. Berrit was truly ill.

"You should be less trouble." Berrit pushed Anyel off his

lap. "I put you there for good reason. You've a cracked skull."

"And you've got the blight." Anyel gathered his will and his

dignity and made it to his feet before Berrit. "It'll spread to
your crew."

"Too late for that." Berrit rolled away to kneeling and used

the corner of his desk to help him to his feet. "The ones who
haven't got it have had it." He pulled a handkerchief from his
pocket and spit into it, then reached for his glass to take
another drink. "I've had it twice. I don't think it'll kill me this
time."

Twice. Anyel's head spun and it wasn't from the blow or

the rocking of the ship. "Two times? It can't be the same

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thing." He tried to cross the room and came up short as the
stone at the end of the chain proved heavier than he'd
guessed.

"Then there's two plagues in the city," Berrit muttered.

"Trust His Highness to do nothing in parts."

"Where did it start?" Anyel tried to move again and

managed to shift the stone this time.

"In general?" Berrit shook his head. "A village somewhere

in the Pirrone region. The steward's men went up to collect
the tithe and the place was empty, graveyard full. They were
only there an hour by their reckoning, maybe less. The next
week, there was one survivor of that party to say so."

With the rising light and proximity, Anyel got another look

at Berrit. Berrit's rugged features were haggard now, sun-
dark and scarred skin draped loosely over his bones. The man
had never been attractive; now it was a good thing he was
titled, if he hadn't married already. The pox didn't usually kill
in large numbers. Maybe there were two illnesses afoot, but
better to assume not for the moment. "It could have come
from that village, or it could have been brought in by some
traveler who died elsewhere. Let me examine you."

Berrit, still leaning against the desk, looked skeptical. "If

you do anything to me, you'll never make it off this ship."

"I don't want to hurt you. I can help." Anyel would have

been exasperated at the best of times. With his head aching
so much that it felt he was bleeding inside his skull, his
stomach sick and empty at once, his mouth dry and bloody,
and his bladder complaining heartily, Anyel was about to
forget any oath he'd made, either to the monks or the

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mysteries. The idea of knocking Berrit over with a cantrip and
curing him was very appealing.

"That's what Quin said. He's locked the city and closed the

ports as of this morning. He wanted to make sure you were
there, though."

Anyel's knees threatened to dump him on the floor again.

He busied himself with evaluating Berrit's condition instead.
"He... because of the plague? Why?"

"You think the King is going to ignore the rumors of a 'holy

man of mysteries' on the same island where he dumped his...
friend?" Berrit, chin up to let Anyel feel the swellings in his
throat, looked down his nose at Anyel. "You're just lucky he
didn't panic and have you killed before he needed you for
something."

Berrit was—and had always been—disapproving of Anyel's

affair with Quin. Now, though, he looked almost sympathetic.
Anyel pushed away his thoughts on the matter and
concentrated on Berrit's illness.

After a moment, Anyel forgot his own body and was lost in

his awareness of Berrit's. He could feel Berrit's blood moving
and the lymph flowing sluggishly along with it. There was
swelling in Berrit's liver and heart; Anyel could feel the
remnant toxins of a terrible fever. It was the pox, only worse.
Closing his eyes, he tried to remember his mother's teaching
on pox and other fever illnesses.

"Where did the pox begin?"
"The village." Berrit pulled back, scowling.
"No." Anyel got him by the chin with one hand and forced

Berrit's mouth open. "Where were the first blisters?" He

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answered his own question, running a finger along the inside
of Berrit's lower lip and finding flat scars there. Berrit spit his
finger out and glared at him. "The mouth."

"I hope, for your sake, that you can cure it." Berrit drained

the last of the wine in the glass, swishing it around his mouth
and glaring at Anyel again. "His Highness will never forgive
any of us if his complexion is marred. I'll have someone bring
you water to drink and to wash, and food," he said, stepping
around Anyel and heading for the door. "There's no
chamberpot in here; the water closet is behind the mirrored
panel."

"You're..." Anyel tried to follow and came up short. "If

you'll stay a little longer, I might be able to heal you."

"Not for me." Berrit coughed heavily, leaning on the handle

as he opened the door. "I've no interest in mountain witchery
or praying. I healed once, I'll heal again." The door shut
behind him and Anyel could hear his coughing fade.

Anyel looked around. Berrit had said the water closet was

behind a mirror. Anyel would worry about the plague and
Quin and Berrit once he felt more human. The stone dragged
as he shuffled across the room. He hoped the floorboards in
the closet were sturdy. He was quite full of ignominy for the
time being.

* * * *

They reached the port of the capital city under the blanket

of night. Looking out the window as they made their way
toward the port through the narrow, high-sided channel,
Anyel could see only darkness except high on the city's huge

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walls. The signal fires glowed like miniature suns, so bright
that Anyel could make out the silhouettes of soldiers
patrolling almost all the way from one post's halo to the light
of the next. Immediately outside the window, a green glass
lamp swung—dark. They were running without lights.

Anyel settled back into the pillows of Berrit's bed. He'd

hauled the stone up with him and, well-fed, washed, and
dressed in a clean white silk robe, he was in the lap of luxury
compared to life in Bisera. He hadn't seen Berrit for two days,
and the scruffy, overweight young man barely squeezed into
a squire's leather jerkin who brought his food and water
wouldn't say where the ship's captain was, or if Berrit was
well at all. The squire had removed the wine from Berrit's
desk and locked the drawers. Anyel had given in to the aching
of his head and slept most of the trip, when not wakened by
the demands of his body.

Even without looking out the window, Anyel could tell

when they were close. The ship groaned with relief as her
sails came down, and Anyel heard the rhythmic splash of oars
from several small boats. To his surprise, he heard the splash
of the anchor and rattle of the chain far too early for them to
be near the docks. He got up on his knees to look, but all he
could see was the dark.

The key turned in the lock and the door opened. "Time for

you to go." That was Berrit again. His voice was a rasp barely
stronger than a whisper now, but Anyel recognized it. It was
too dark to make out the features of the dense shadow that
moved against the black of the hall beyond the door.

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"We're not making landfall?" Anyel pushed the stone off

the bed and stood up as it hit the floor. He'd become adept at
getting around with it on.

"I told you. City's locked. Put on the cloak and boots."

Berrit meant the black leather cloak and boots that had come
with the clean robe. "And unlock that thing." The keys hit the
floor at Anyel's feet.

Anyel groped where he'd heard them fall and found them

after a moment's fumbling. It took a moment to find the
smallest key and a little longer to get it into the lock. The key
turned easily, at least, and the shackle fell away. Now, he
could pull the boots on. They were so soft inside and the fine
leather hugged his bare, callused feet. They fit perfectly and
he wondered if the royal cobblers still had the original last
that had been carved according to drawings of his feet.

It's a blessing to go barefoot. Anyel felt bereft, so far from

home. He pulled the cloak on and it wrapped him in darkness,
the velvet suede interior clinging to his skin like a lingering
touch. His rude robes and rope belt belonged to another
lifetime.

Berrit coughed, startling him, then spoke. "They'll be

waiting for you. Don't be stupid."

"I won't." Anyel headed out the door and Berrit let him

pass. He could feel the heat from Berrit's body against his
bare cheek, the only thing not wrapped up safe in the cloak.
"I could," he started to say. I could heal you before I go. It
wouldn't take long. "It would be helpful..." The door closed in
his face. It would be helpful to try it, at least.

Well. If that's how he's going to be about it.

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Anyel tugged the cloak tighter around him and made for

the short steps up onto the deck. It was only when he
stepped out into the open air and found the guards waiting
for him with their hooded lanterns and their glittering pikes
that he understood. Of course Berrit wasn't coming. The city
was closed and Berrit was ill. Anyel felt like a fool.

* * * *

"Yela." Quin's voice was as warm and sweet as ever. Anyel

was just pushing back his hood, his eyes adjusting to the light
in the room, and Quin was right there, in front of him. "I
knew you'd come."

Time hadn't touched Quin. He looked like he was made of

amber, he was that timeless and golden. Anyel's gut twisted
and his heart slammed against his ribs as though it were
trying to break through and leap into Quin's outstretched
hands.

"Come in," Quin said, like he was pleading, like the door

wasn't closed and guarded behind Anyel, like they weren't
deep under the castle in the catacombs. Down in a beautifully
furnished oubliette, Anyel's mind murmured. He pushed the
thought aside and let his hands fall into Quin's. "You look so
worn, my Yela." Anyel's childhood name sounded familiar in
Quin's soft voice. Quin's hands closed on his and Quin drew
him into the room.

"I'm fine." Anyel spoke before he thought, to calm Quin's

concern.

Fine. The echo of the word in his mind unleashed a

cascade of pent-up thoughts like a raging river and he bit his

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lip. Twenty years. His whole youth. His best years. His family
growing old without him. The wife and children he might have
had if he had played out his role in Quin's court. His
reputation. His wealth. His life. The taste of blood brought
him back to the real world.

"How are you?" Anyel sank down onto the plush chaise to

which Quin had led him and made the mistake of looking up
at Quin.

Quin. Gods and their mercy, they must have had none of it

when they blessed Quin. No mercy for Anyel, that was
certain. The madness of his love for Quin was never far from
him.

"Ashamed," Quin said softly. He wouldn't look Anyel in the

eyes and diamond tears beaded his dark lashes. "Yela, I sent
you away..." He sank down to his knees and Anyel wanted to
sink through the floor so he wouldn't be higher than Quin.
"They said you had to go. It was for the kingdom. If I hadn't
married Maryen... Her father insisted. He told Berrit to... I
promised him the fleet if he would just take you somewhere.
Anywhere."

"I understand." Anyel tried to understand. He'd never

thought it would matter. What did Taryelin care what his son
did as long as no bastards came of it? But with the King
dead... Oh, they'd been so careless. "I should have made you
be more careful," he whispered, leaning in to kiss Quin's
forehead.

"You always gave me everything I wanted," Quin said

softly. "You're not to blame for that. I wanted to bring you

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back." He turned Anyel's hands palms up and kissed each
one. "I just... couldn't. But now, I need you."

"Are you ill?" Anyel pulled his hands away to touch Quin's

cheeks and throat. He'd have sensed it already, he was sure.

"No, not yet. But if I were to fall ill, Anyel... I can't die

from some damn peasant pox." Quin pushed himself to
standing and paced away. "Can you imagine the history
books? I have work to do. The north country grows restless
and the savages prey on my ships, send raiding parties into
the mountains to murder my people and take my beasts. I
grow tired of it. And then this. I'm plagued to death by small
things."

With the little distance, Anyel could get some perspective,

on the room and on his situation. The room was well-
decorated, like any other suite in the castle. If it weren't for
the lack of windows and all the steps down to get here, Anyel
never would have guessed. The stone around them was
draped with tapestries and a life-sized portrait of Quin and his
wife dominated the wall behind the wide table where Quin
had gone to pour two goblets of wine. King Quyelin Enaid of
Oranne and Queen Maryen Urien of Perdire. Urien was cousin
to Kettyl was cousin to Enaid. Anyel's own family followed
another line, the line of Taryelin's first wife.

"How is your wife?" Anyel didn't want his mind to continue

where it was going, judging Quin's words. Quin always did try
and make light of things. Maryen looked lovely in the portrait,
her hair parted like sable wings, and her long, slim hands
folded in her lap. She was a world away from the little women
of Bisera.

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"She remains," Quin said, shrugging. The ermine that hung

from his shoulders rippled with it. "I tried to have her leave,
but she would not go. She has ideas." He turned back toward
Anyel and contempt was heavy on his features before the
smile chased it away like a wayward cloud from a perfect sky.

"That's noble of her." Anyel took the wine Quin offered. He

sipped it, but tasted nothing. It might as well have been
water.

"She's always been too much like her father. We'll see how

noble she feels after." Quin took a sip of wine and then turned
back to the table; now his attention fell on the scrolls and
maps there. "The blight is in the women's quarters. I had
them sealed except for a few woman physicians I let come
and go by the lower courtyard. Who knows what brought it.
It's on their heads. One lady must have a gypsy lace and
ribbon seller come in from the countryside; another must
have a white kitten from a bakery by the walls; my wife must
have pitayas picked under a full moon by a farmer's virgin
daughter. Nonsense. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have
spread into the rest of the palace."

"I should go there now." Anyel put the wine down on a tiny

mosaic table and got to his feet. He wished they'd asked him
to come; he could have brought his runes and his books and
his quills. "I'll need wine, any kind, some quills and ink, a
small looking glass, a woman's, and a magnifier as in her
sewing kit." There were quills and ink on the table. Without
thinking, he brushed past Quin to get it.

"Don't." Quin's hand locked around Anyel's wrist like a

shackle, broad and gold and rough with sword calluses. "I

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can't have you falling ill when I need you. You're to stay
here." His voice was just as hard.

"How." Anyel found himself staring at Quin's hand on him.

"Why am I here, if I'm not going to tend the ailing?"

"My physicians tend me alone," Quin said, his voice

softening. "You know that. They cannot have their cares
divided." Gently, he turned Anyel away from the table and
drew him in. "More than that, I cannot risk losing you, Yela,"
he breathed against Anyel's temple.

"You should stay well away from me." Anyel scrambled for

an excuse even as he recoiled, twisting his wrist from Quin's
grip. "Berrit is ill, and I was housed in his quarters." Halfway
across the room, he paused, his mind caught for a moment
on how easy it was to get free. Quin had always been the
stronger of them, mind and body.

"I'm sure he took care," Quin said icily. "Did he?" His eyes

were hard as he looked Anyel over, head to foot, as though
he could read Anyel's body under the cloak and robe.

"He kept his distance." Anyel wasn't going to mention the

part where he'd pitched over on his face. "But I don't want to
take any chances." He lied with as much ease as he'd pulled
away. "You should let me treat him." The words simply rolled
out as though something else had taken over him, something
that didn't love Quin at all. Something that didn't care to tell
the truth, either. "If I can experiment on him, I can secure a
cure for both of us, should anything go wrong. And if it works,
you can still use him. Or, you can let me treat the women."

Quin's face was still cold, but he nodded slowly. "Who can

say what cures a woman will cure a man? I will have him

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brought. It would be inconvenient to lose him at this time and
he seems to have a predilection for falling ill." He took up his
wine again and drank. "Take off that cloak and sit." It wasn't
a suggestion.

"As you wish." Anyel slipped the cloak off and draped it

over a marble nude holding up a gold ewer, for lack of
anything better. He returned to his seat on the couch, trying
not to let his wariness show. After his other lifetime on
Bisera, he was out of practice when it came to lying with his
words or his body. Sipping wine gave him something to do
with himself.

"They say many things about you. You're quite a marvel,

you know." Quin came to sit with him, so close that his body
heat soaked into Anyel's skin through the white silk robe.
"They do not discuss your beauty nearly enough." He brushed
Anyel's hair aside with a gentle stroke, then he kissed Anyel
on the side of the neck, the way he used to do.

Countless nights of dreaming and yearning and now Anyel

felt full of ice and uncertainty. "Quin." He turned enough to
see Quin out of the corner of his eye. "What would I do if I
made you ill? Don't do that to me." He made himself reach
over and rest his hand on Quin's thigh, feeling warm,
powerful muscle under fine velvet. "All this time... what's a
little longer? Weren't you worried about the history books just
a moment ago?" He made himself smile and the laugh came a
little easier. If he could just look at Quin and not think, the
warmth would return.

"I suppose you've built up a surfeit of tolerances that I

owe you," Quin said, answering Anyel's smile. "I suppose I

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can wait." He stood and then drained the last of his wine. "I
will get you your experiment." Looking down at Anyel, Quin
let his fingers linger on Anyel's hair. "You make a fine monk.
Tempting enough to make me consider attending services.
But I think it is past time for that to be over."

With that, Quin turned away and bellowed for some

servant to come. The door swung open and the attendants
bustled in. One wrapped Quin in a bed gown over his clothing
so that it would look as though he'd just risen from his bed,
two brought in a heavy chest, and a fourth drew back a
tapestry to reveal an alcove with a bed.

"You'll have what you need," Quin said as he allowed a

servant to bind his hair back in a braid as though for sleeping.
"There are clothes better suited to you here for when you
wake. Charming as the monk's garb is, it hardly shows you to
best advantage. I'll have a tailor sent to perfect the fit."

"Thank you." Anyel knew Quin well enough than to protest

anything he didn't need to absolutely. Quin had always been
accustomed to being obeyed and the years would only have
ingrained the expectation. He rose, but forced himself not to
bow as Quin's attendants ushered him out the door. Before
they were gone, one took Quin's empty glass and, folding it in
a napkin, tucked it in his jerkin pocket as he followed the rest
out.

The door closed with a hollow sound and, a heartbeat

later, a bolt fell into place. Anyel turned to look at Quin's
likeness on the wall as though it held some answer. Instead,
it just made him uneasy, as though Quin could see him even
now. He'd long since tried to give up dreaming of this day,

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but even in his most pragmatic moments, he'd never
imagined being kept beneath the palace in the dark, like a pet
mole. His heart beat unbearably fast and he grabbed his
wine, draining the glass to try and calm himself.

He had never dreamed that his mind would be racing with

ways of escaping. He had never dreamed of running from
Quin. Anyel sank down on the couch, cradling the delicate
goblet in his hands. Not running from Quin, going where he
was needed. He needed to be back in the world, doing the
right thing. Not the right thing for Quin. Just the right thing.
The two had never been so far apart, as far apart as Anyel
was from the man who'd been in love with Quin.

* * * *

Anyel's conscience wouldn't let him sleep. He tried to tell

himself that he'd been just as trapped on Bisera, but it wasn't
true. He could have left Bisera and accepted the
consequences, but he'd chosen to stay. The people were
plain, the library was vast, the abbot was tolerant, and...
Anyel had been happy, once he'd stopped sulking about it.

Finally, he had what he'd been so sure he wanted for so

many years, and now, he didn't want it anymore. He was
trapped underground, trying not to panic. He'd never thought
himself one to be claustrophobic. It wasn't just the
accommodations. It was Quin. Quin who'd let them lock him
in this place. Quin who had him brought like Anyel was a
particular bottle of wine for which Quin had developed a
craving.

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Anyel had washed, when a servant was let in to bring him

warm water and build up the fire, but he had refused to
relinquish the robe, hanging it up to wear later instead. He
was what he was, and where once he'd have hurried to dress
as Quin fancied, he wasn't about to do so now. All his years of
exile and study and asceticism meant something to him, if
they didn't to Quin.

Curled up on the bed, in the shadows of the alcove, he

tugged close the dressing gown he'd been provided and tried
to sleep propped up on soft down pillows. His back ached
from the softness of the beds he'd lain in since being
abducted from Bisera. All he could do was wait and hope he
had a cure for this thing. A chill ran through him, but he
pushed it away. He wasn't even going to think about what
would happen if he didn't. As hard as he tried, though, fear
crept in, even as he drifted off to sleep.

* * * *

The sound of the bolt being pulled brought Anyel back to

the world with a jerk. The candles had burned down and the
air in the room was stifling, thick with the taste of wax. He
scrambled out of the bed, pulling the dressing gown around
him as a wash of cold, damp air swept in through the open
door.

"His Highness says that whatever else you need, you're to

have." Another voice Anyel knew, coming in with the cold air
and the light of a lantern in the speaker's hand. "Has no one
else come since the man-servant?"

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"I slept." Anyel had to get out of the way as more

shadowed forms were coming through the dark maw of the
door.

"Apparently, so." Vannes lit fresh tapers, bringing the

room into view again. Now, Anyel could see her, his mother's
third-cousin, with her black hair turned silver and lines on her
ruddy, common face. "You might not have woken, by the
taste of the air. Put him on the chaise, fools. And wait for the
girl to cover it."

Anyel turned to see a pair of soldiers bearing a litter

draped in a dark pall, looking harried. A maid scampered past
them and drew a heavy woolen blanket over the chaise.
Another brought in a stack of linens and yet another carried a
basket like one would take to a picnic.

"What else do you need?" Vannes sounded angry, but

Anyel remembered his mother's kin well enough to recall that
the women often had that sharp edge to their voices in the
kitchen.

"I..." Everything. Anyel's mind dropped the list he had

compiled before sleep and the items scattered to the corners
of his consciousness. You know what you know, he told
himself. If we could unknow things, we'd be happier for it.

"Wine or some fresh juice," he said, because it came to

him first. "Dark is better, but any will suffice. Honey.
Willowbark. Herbs such as the cook uses, hot water in a
kettle, a pail, white cloth, charcoal for writing, a time piece,
paper, ink, quills, lancets, a shallow basin of dark material,
cold water, palta oil, a branch of ilex, fronds of a gall oak,
hard wood for good coals, and a quantity of malabathrum to

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fill both hands." As he spoke, he watched them move Berrit
from the litter to the chaise and cover him with the pall. This
time, they left his face exposed.

"Is that all?"
Anyel couldn't tell if Vannes were being sarcastic or not. "A

mirror, since a window is out of the question. A lady's powder
mirror as well. A hand glass. And lamps that burn oil; the wax
on the air is a danger to weak lungs." As the servants and
soldiers hurried out, the silence crept back in until Berrit's
thick breathing could be heard above it.

"They say it's the second time he's been ill." Vannes put

her lantern down on the table by Berrit's head. "It's often
worse."

"People never used to get it twice," Anyel said,

approaching slowly. The waves of Berrit's illness lapped up
against him like the sea.

"Two of the serving girls in the west wing were carried out

today," Vannes said. She stood there, hands folded over the
seal on her belt. At her hip, a huge cluster of keys glittered in
the light.

"Dead?" Anyel's feet stopped moving as his mind took that

in. Two dead, so soon.

"Of course. There's no other way to be getting out, is

there, now that His Highness has closed it off." Vannes gave
him a sympathetic look. "I'll be bringing you those things, and
I'll have them leave the door ajar, but the one at the top of
the stairs will be locked. Can't get the men to come down
farther anyway, with him in here." She nodded at Berrit on
the way past.

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The door creaked almost closed behind her and Anyel

heard her footsteps retreating as her voice rose to chastise
someone in the distance. He was alone again, except for the
dry sound of Berrit breathing. This was the acid test, he
supposed. Time to learn what he really knew.

There was a little water left in the pitcher from when he'd

washed and it would be cold by now. He took a clean kerchief
off the top of the stack of linens and went to fill the basin of
the little vanity by the garderobe. He'd worked under worse
conditions before, he reminded himself. Shacks and tents and
hovels, even the stables, and not always tending human
patients. Berrit was safely bedded on the chaise, it was warm
in the room, and Anyel would have everything he needed.

Time to stop thinking of yourself, above all else, Anyel

reminded himself. Thinking of himself made it impossible to
feel the illness or injury in another. Something about seeing
Quin again had left him feeling crippled and drained. He
carried the basin back to the chaise, stepping into the now-
familiar sphere of wrongness around his patient.

"No wonder you're in this condition," he chided, sinking

down to sit by Berrit's side. The fever had brought out the
pox again and now Berrit's skin was raw and freshly ruined,
burning with a terrible dry heat. "I expect you didn't think it
would be this bad. Your kind never do." With the basin in his
lap, he wrung out the kerchief and sponged Berrit's face
gently.

The kerchief came away stained and encrusted. When he

was done sponging Berrit's face and throat and chest, Anyel
held it up to look at it in the light, reading the color and

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texture of the cruor and crystallized lymph. He knew the pox
and he could feel the heat and famine of it in the waste it
forced from the body. Blight. Plague. It was like drought and
locusts descended on a garden.

"Thought I was rid of you."
Anyel nearly spilled the basin in his lap and his restless

thoughts went in all directions, the horses of his mind
spooked and running. "For mercy's..." he sputtered. He
turned to see Berrit looking at him from one barely cracked
eye. Berrit's voice was as ravaged as the rest of him. "Don't
speak," he said at last. "You're making this harder." He gave
Berrit a glare.

Since Anyel couldn't get his thoughts back in order, he put

the bowl down and took the kerchief to what was left of the
fire. Though the fine material was wet, the water steamed
away in moments and blackness crept through the fibers until
the whole of it was consumed. Blackness with only the
smallest edge of orange and gold; the smoke of it was white
with a twist of gray. Sour smell, not sweet.

"What are you doing?" The question brought on wracking

coughs.

"What did I tell you?" Anyel snapped. His goblet and the

wine Quin had poured still stood on the table. He tugged the
cork free and sloshed wine into his glass, then brought it back
to Berrit. "I don't say things just to hear myself." On Bisera,
when he had occasion to give orders, people did as they were
told.

He stopped lecturing to prop Berrit up enough that he

could get some wine down the man's throat. When he'd

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managed to get half the glass down Berrit without drowning
him, the coughing ceased.

Berrit had only just drawn one whole breath when he

looked about to ask another question. "Don't talk," Anyel said
firmly. "No." Berrit glared at him a long moment with more
heat than just the fever in his eyes. "If you die, I'm in
trouble," Anyel said, hoping that it would convince Berrit to be
still. Berrit opened his mouth again. "Aha! No." Anyel covered
Berrit's mouth with his hand. "Don't make me gag you." Any
further threats were postponed by the sound of feet on the
stairs and voices.

"I mean it. Close your eyes."
"Your requirements are complete." Vannes barreled

through the door as Anyel was rising to his feet. "Fortunate
for you, a few stern souls still staff the yard." She was
carrying a huge basket; behind her, a burly man carried
bundles of wood in a sling on his back. "The wood and the
water are coming, the herbs and oil are in the basket. I must
go and see that the halfwit bearing the lanterns doesn't come
down the steps on his head."

It seemed wisest to stay out of the way. Anyel took up a

fresh kerchief and sat back down with the basin at his feet. To
his surprise, Berrit behaved and suffered Anyel bathing his
face and throat and hands without complaint even while
awake. The water was still cold and likely soothed, but Anyel
knew it was unlikely something as irrelevant as comfort would
move Berrit to good behavior. Berrit was even tractable
enough to let Anyel get a few measures of cold, fresh water
into him when that arrived.

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They brought him everything he needed—Quin had been

true in that, at least. Before Vannes and the men who smelled
of the stables were gone, the room was beginning to look like
Anyel's work room at the abbey.

"You'll need to eat." Vannes came in again as the last of

the men lumbered out. "I've brought you some plain stew."
She carried the iron pot by the cloth-wrapped handle. "I'll
leave it on the fire." The men had put a rod across the fire to
hold the kettle; Vannes added the pot to the rod, with the
hook turned so that it would be out of the strongest heat.
"You can send a note with the guards if you need anything,
I'm to bed. It's coming on midnight. His Majesty will want to
hear of your progress in the morning."

"I'll keep that in mind." Anyel brought the now-warm basin

of water over and poured it into the slop pail one of the men
had left by the door.

"Lochan keep you," Vannes murmured. She made the sign

on her forehead with her thumb and then hurried out. Guards
must have been waiting for her outside the door. They didn't
close or bolt it, but Anyel heard a chain drawn across.

Anyel stood there a moment, gathering himself so that he

could get to work. The familiar gesture of faith here in this
sphere of power and vanity comforted him a little. He might
not be a believer, but he was a good student and the people
he cared for believed in him.

"What in blazes are you playing at?" Berrit rasped.
Most of the people he cared for, Anyel amended. All but

one at the most. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"This isn't about you," he said, reminding himself that arguing

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with the ill was as profitable as arguing with the pigs in the
yard. Nature drove them, not common sense. "I needed to
experiment on someone. I guessed that Quin would most
likely allow it if it benefited him."

"All right then." When Anyel turned to look, surprised,

Berrit looked placated under the mask of his illness. "Get to
it."

"Fine. Don't talk." Anyel dragged his eyes away from the

lock of Berrit's fevered, dark gaze and put his attention to the
array of supplies and devices on the table where Quin's maps
and scrolls had been.

"I won't."
Anyel exhaled through his nose. It wasn't worth

responding to, he told himself. The man just couldn't help
having the last word. Too bad that couldn't be cured while
keeping his oaths intact.

Lancet, powder mirror. The mirror was a pretty little thing

with violets under glass on the back; he wondered if it were
Vannes' own. The lancets were probably hers; they weren't
something anyone but the woman of a house or a healer
would keep. Returning to Berrit, he sat down and put the
mirror on one knee. He took Berrit's hand in his, turning it to
hold Berrit's wrist over the mirror.

He could feel Berrit's stare on him and it made his cheeks

hot. The man had scars from work and fighting on his hand
and arm; one more nick wouldn't matter, no more than a fly
bite. Anyel twitched his hand that held the lancet and a tiny
red 'V' showed over a thin blue vein, then opened like a little
mouth to let out a drop of blood. The droplet swelled and fell,

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then another. Anyel collected three, then put Berrit's hand
down, covering the tiny cut with a finger.

A cut, Anyel could heal, though he usually told people it

was best to leave them be to let the mind remember its
mistakes. In his mind's eye, he brought the edges of the
wound together and knit it up with threads of blood, cruor
that formed and set and sank back under the unwounded
skin. The little task made him feel a bit better. He took the
mirror back to the table where the light was good.

The time piece he'd been brought was a gold and steel

clock in a glass dome. Anyel set that where he could see it
and got to work, adding water to Berrit's blood to make a film
over the whole of the mirror. This was simply another puzzle.

Four hundred years before, the abbey at Bisera had been

the site of another cure, one for a fever of boils that spread
from manger to house, killing kine and men alike. Anyel had
studied that and at least here, he only had to heal one man at
a time. The film over the mirror was dry and Anyel had
another look at his adversary, or at the spirit of it caught
between the blood and the glass. He began writing in charcoal
on the malabathrum, one rune for each leaf, to divine what
he could from the answers they would return.

"Must we both fast for this? You should eat. Or at least let

me drink."

The rasping voice broke Anyel's concentration and he

threw down the quill he held, spattering the table with ink.
"Do you have no self-control?" he burst out. The stool he'd
been perched on fell over as he struggled to his feet, fighting
the stiff curve of his spine. "I asked you for a little quiet and

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you can't bear to keep your mouth shut." He grabbed the
dipper out of the tall ewer of well water he'd been brought
and sloshed water into a glass measure. "Did I really offend
you so much all those years ago that you'd spite me by
making sure you die?"

"I won't last long if I go another four hours without a

drink," Berrit said wearily.

That stopped Anyel before he went so far as to pour the

water down Berrit's throat by force. Four. He checked over his
shoulder and the clock's hour hand was in the small hours,
the moon dial headed toward setting.

"I do apologize for considering you an empty-headed

influence on His Highness."

"I'm so sorry." All the frustration went out of Anyel and he

sat down on the chaise as his knees threatened to give out.
His body was furious with him. "Here, drink." He was furious
with himself. How could he forget to tend the person he was
supposed to cure? "I'm sorry, I'm not... not myself."

"Too bad." Berrit was still so hot with fever. "You're

tolerable this way."

Carefully, he helped Berrit drink. "You should have..." But

he'd told Berrit to be silent. "Let me make you a tea for that
fever." Anyel was wracked with guilt. He started to settle the
pall back in place and then realized what it was, as though he
were seeing it for the first time. "You shouldn't be covered in
this," he said, tugging it away as he stood. "That's horrible.
I'll get you a proper blanket. Gods, what am I..." He let the
words trail off as he gathered up the pall and bundled it out
the door. He didn't want to see the damn thing again.

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"Anyel," Berrit said quietly. "I was sleeping."
"As you should have been." Anyel stalked to the bed where

he yanked aside the heavy feather coverlet to get at the silky
wool blankets and soft linens. Berrit was wearing a night shirt
and leggings; they'd pulled him from his bed without anything
else. Anyel tucked him in with the linens and then the
blankets, then slid a soft pillow under his head.

"Am I allowed to talk?"
"Not unless you need something." Anyel turned his back on

Berrit and filled a cup with willow bark and hot water. He
picked up the stool and thumped his backside down on it. This
time he kept his eye on the clock. He was so close to a
solution, but he remembered to get up and fish the bark out
of the cup and bring it to Berrit, sweetened with honey.

"Now?" Berrit asked, once he'd choked down the tea. The

honey was more of an apology than a cure for the bitterness.

"No."
Anyel filled the basin with cold water, then mixed in

seaweed powders—fan-leaf and tangleweed—until it was
almost a thick gel. He knew them well and if they soothed, he
could work their essences into a cure. Berrit tolerated Anyel
coating his skin with it, as least as much as Anyel could bare
without actually undressing him.

Berrit was too lean from the fevers the blight had brought,

and his skin was marked with old pocks where it wasn't
sprinkled with new ones. On the whole, though, he was well-
made, with heavy limbs roped with muscle and sparse, sleek
black hair over deep olive skin. Anyel remembered him being
rangier, raw-boned, and caustic when he did bother to speak.

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Quin was always sending him away, laughing at his

attempts to keep up with them, teasing him for being so
serious. What was there to protect Quin from in those days?
Quin's father's lands had been their playground, Anyel's
grandfather's mountain duchy their secret hide-away where
Anyel's mother fed them and turned a blind eye to their
indiscretions.

"Now?" Berrit sounded half sleeping for all that Anyel was

spreading cold gel on his feet.

"No."
"You never offended me," Berrit said drowsily. His eyes

were closed, but his mouth wouldn't stay shut. Anyel had
obviously missed this garrulous facet of his personality.

"That's not something you need," Anyel reminded him,

trying not to be too sharp.

"Says you," Berrit retorted, like they were young again.

"You never offended me, Anyel. Quin, not you. He still does."

"You're sick," Anyel said. "Shut up." He draped a sheet

back over Berrit and went to get the palta oil.

"Can't be that sick if you're forgetting me."
"Shut up," Anyel said again, feeling twenty and irritable

about it. He poured oil on a bit of the gauze that had been in
one of Vannes' baskets and came back to dab the green oil on
Berrit's cracked lips.

"I'm rather forgettable," Berrit admitted.
"You're far too irritating to forget," Anyel said flatly.
Berrit cracked an eye open. "Am I green?"
"Yes." Anyel tucked him in and then pushed himself back

to his feet, ignoring the creak of his knees. "And I can make it

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permanent if you don't sleep." That won him some silence,
and Anyel tidied up and got himself a drink of water before
sitting down to write a report for Quin. The last thing he
needed was for Quin to barge down here in a rage over being
ignored.

"He ruined you."
Anyel's hand froze and then he remembered to move it

before the quill left a blotch on the page. His heart was
hurting itself, trying to get out between his ribs or up his
throat. Quin hadn't... wouldn't... Anyel couldn't see, his eyes
were burning.

Anyel put the quill down and rubbed his eyes with the

heels of his hands. He would have to rest soon; hopefully this
would be done before the sun set again. Berrit was feverish
and talking nonsense.

"I'm sorry, Anyel."
"Oh, gods, shut up." Anyel made his hand stop shaking so

he could pick up the quill. "You're delirious. I need to cure
you before your brains cook."

Of course he'd never gone back. Someone else might

have, someone else might have had more than a dying,
ancient duke of a scrap of mountainside to speak for them.
Not Anyel. He swallowed and kept writing his report for Quin,
quill scraping on the page like a crow speaking.

He ruined you.
They'd been in love. Quin would always care for him, Anyel

had been so sure of it. What reputation had he needed, when
he had Quin? Anyel's breath could hardly slither through the
tightness in his throat. Of course, if they'd let anyone come

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with them, if they'd not been alone all the time, if they'd done
anything but what Quin wanted, maybe Anyel would have had
some scrap of dignity left.

His Highness didn't specify either time... You're just lucky

he didn't panic and have you killed before he needed you for
something.

"He didn't tell you to send me to Bisera." Anyel couldn't

stop his voice from shaking. Now, from a distance, he could
see the whole of it. "He told you... he told you..." He could
see it but he couldn't say it. "Oh, gods, he must have been
furious with you." Furious to find out that Berrit had let him
live. Furious to find out that Anyel had taken orders and
joined the abbey.

"It's bad form to kill a monk, even when you're the king,"

Berrit said reluctantly.

"You lied. The letter, the everything, you..." Anyel's mind

was running around his skull like a man in a hall of mirrors.

"I used to write his papers for him." Berrit didn't even

sound smug.

Anyel forced himself to write the last line. I should have a

definite solution for Your Highness by sunset. Definite
solution. Potion. Pill. Cure. If he left here alive, he'd never
waste another day of his life on Quin. If. Father Anyel of
Bisera Lochan Abbey, at Palace Oranne, Day One Hundred
and Eighty-Five, Fifth Hour, Year Quyelin XX.

"Anyel."
"Sleep." Anyel folded the letter in three and stood.
"Anyel." Berrit held out a green-smeared hand, red-

speckled palm up.

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Anyel couldn't look at him. "I said sleep." He ignored the

hand and murmured a few words from an old lullaby his
mother had sung when he was a baby, his personal cantrip
for sleep. It was kitchen magic at the core, but Berrit's hand
fell to dangle limp over the edge of the chaise, and his breath
shifted into the slow pace of sleeping.

At the door, Anyel called for the guard. "Deliver this to His

Highness when he requests a report."

King. Monk. The only way they could have parted ways

further would have been for one to betray the other. Trust His
Highness to do nothing by halves.

* * * *

The clock on the table turned over the hours like pages of

a book while Anyel worked. Between thoughts, he
remembered to get up and tend to Berrit. The fever ran wild,
burning off his flesh until the lines around his eyes and mouth
deepened and his cheeks hollowed. Anyel would have worried
more, except that Berrit was strong, his heart beating too fast
but without missing a beat, and Anyel was nearly at a
solution.

Noon passed and the day Anyel couldn't see began its

downward slide into night. He poured wine into the dark
wooden bowl and picked up the ilex. He knew Berrit's illness
better than he knew Berrit now; he would remember it for
years. Like clockwork locusts, the blight ate up its victim and
the body burned in its wake. Anyel touched willowbark and
seaweed, reminding himself of their essence, and wrote what
he saw into the wine.

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As the sharp end of the ilex branch cut the surface of the

wine again and again, the wine thickened and changed, first
losing color and then darkening to the color of dry blood.
Once the seaweed was written into it, and a cold wind off the
water, the wine slowed to something sluggish that held the
shape of a word for a heartbeat after the word was written.

When Anyel set the ilex down, his hand was shaking. He

passed his palm over his brow and it came away slick with
sweat. When he checked the clock again, it was now a full
half-day since Berrit had interrupted him the first time.

The wine had been reduced to half. Anyel took a drop from

the tip of the ilex and tasted it. It was surprisingly sweet, with
a hint of vinegar to it like a tonic. His hands were shaking too
much to pour it, though. He had to take a little ivory dram
measure and dip out a small portion instead.

Getting up was agony. How had he gotten so old? Anyel

blamed the soft bed and the hours spent bent over the desk.
On Bisera, he was never still this long, certainly never
confined.

Berrit was so deep in the sleep of the sick, his closed eyes

sunken deep in his head so that with the dried, flaking green
seaweed gel and the discoloration of the blight on him, he
looked like he'd been dead some days. It was more than a
little disconcerting, but Anyel had dealt with worse. He just
had to hope he had the cure right the first time.

Getting the cure into Berrit was harder than Anyel had

expected. Berrit barely roused when Anyel sat down and only
whimpered when Anyel patted his cheek. That sound, like a
kicked street dog, made Anyel's stomach ache. Still, this was

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something he'd done before, getting the insensible to take a
potion. It took careful hands and patience, so that Berrit
didn't breathe it in, but soon the little cup was empty. All
Anyel could do was wait.

Time was useful, still. Anyel cleaned the desk, cleaned out

the grate, put fresh wood on the fire, and refilled the kettle.
When that was done, he sat to review his notes. His head was
so heavy, he propped it up on one hand. His eyes were hot
and dry; maybe he should dose himself with the cure. Later,
he told himself, if he felt worse. Once he knew it worked.

* * * *

"I didn't know people actually did that."
Startled out of sleep, Anyel almost fell off the stool.

Rubbing the back of his hand over his eyes, he turned
around, feeling guilty. "Did what?"

"Fell asleep at their desks." Berrit was sitting up, feet on

the floor, blankets shoved down to the end of the chaise. He
brushed at his cheeks, scowling. "Can this come off now?"

Fully awake all of a sudden, Anyel got to his feet as fast as

his joints would allow. Berrit looked remarkably well for a
man who'd been on the decline. "It can." He could hardly tell
if the pox was healed with all that seaweed in the way. It took
him a moment to find a clean cloth and fill the basin, but then
he was at Berrit's side.

"I can wash my own face," Berrit grumbled, but he let

Anyel have at it anyway.

"You'll pull away the scabs," Anyel said. When he'd passed

the cloth over Berrit's skin enough times, though, rinsing it

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out between washes, there was nothing under the mess to
pull away. The old pockmarks were there, but faded to paler
speckles against Berrit's dark skin, and nothing more. "Or
not."

Anyel put everything down and took Berrit's face in his

hands, tilting it face toward the best light.

"What is it?"
Aside from the scowl and the hollowness from the fever

there was... "Nothing. Nothing at all." Lank hair from being
sick, dark circles under the eyes like bruises, chapped lips,
but nothing wrong. "You seem well." Anyel slid his hands
down Berrit's throat and found nothing there but stubble and
then smooth skin. No swelling. "How do you feel?"

"Like the fourth day of a three-day holiday, but nothing

worse," Berrit said, still scowling. "Aside from being covered
in dried green slime."

"You'll live." Anyel rolled his eyes and let Berrit go. "You're

welcome."

"I was going to thank you," Berrit muttered. "I'm not

bereft of all good manners."

"You'll need to take it easy for a few days." Anyel turned

his back on Berrit and made his way back to the table, slowly.
"I'll need to see you again to make sure the blight doesn't
come back, since it seems so fond of you. But I can duplicate
the cure, multiply it, even."

"I take it I may wash, then?"
"Go ahead." Anyel gestured toward the alcove. "The

garderobe is there by the bed. Don't fall down on the way
there."

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"I remember how to walk," Berrit said testily. Anyel heard

him groan as he got to his feet, though.

Anyel turned his attention back to his work. With the ilex,

he began writing on parchment with the cure itself, sketching
the shape of the blight and the interlocking form of the cure.
Later, a monk or hedgewitch trained in the mysteries could
read it and know—without needing to know the exact
ingredients—how to shape a cure. It wasn't the ingredients
that mattered so much as the form and meaning of them in
Anyel's mind. Someone else might make the same cure with
different herbs, with water or the juice of berries instead of
wine.

Peripherally, he was aware of Berrit mixing water from the

kettle and the ewer in a basin and washing with it. The other
presence in the room with them, the ghost of the blight, was
gone. It was just the two of them with their personalities
scraping against each other in the small space.

"I do owe you a great deal of thanks," Berrit said. He

sounded tired and low.

"This is my work," Anyel said. "I would do it for anyone."
"I know. But you could have done it for someone else. One

of the stable boys, one of the ladies-in-waiting, some beggar
on the street. Someone less likely to irritate Quin."

"I thought you were useful to him, that's the only reason,"

Anyel said, keeping his eyes on his work. With a few strokes,
he outlined Berrit's figure lying on a couch near the bottom of
the paper. The first patient was as salient to the essence of
the cure as the disease and the healer. Anyel marked the

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angled spikes of Berrit's personality, the tightness of his jaw,
the rebellion that was the keystone of his nature.

"You're very difficult, you know." Anyel put down the ilex

and spun around. In the middle of the room, Berrit was
stripped to his leggings, standing on one leg like a stork to
wash the other clean of the green scum. Berrit looked at him
from under a stringy curtain of dirty hair. "You are."

"Me?" Anyel took a breath and let it out slowly.

"Fortunately, my calling allows people to avoid me until they
need me." He turned back around to his work. "That's the pot
calling the kettle black, anyway."

Berrit only snorted, then coughed. Anyel froze, but the

cough faded as fast as it had come. "I should go present
myself to His Highness," Berrit said. "If I may."

"I can hardly keep you here," Anyel murmured. He didn't

want to be alone again, but Berrit would regain his strength
best out in the open air. "If you could send me Vannes,
please. I'm in need of some single dram vials."

"I'll do that. Are these your clothes?" Anyel looked over his

shoulder to see Berrit pointing at the clothing Quin had sent.

"Quin had them delivered," Anyel said.
"That would be a no, then. May I?" Berrit shook out a dark

green shirt embroidered with peacock eyes.

"As you will," Anyel said, turning away again. "That one

seems suited to you. But I doubt it will fit."

"First, being unpleasant is hardly the same as being vain,

if that's what you're implying," Berrit said, his voice muffled
by the fabric as he pulled on the shirt. "Second, I gathered
you'd been a little lax about the vanity yourself, being a monk

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and all, but I hardly figured you'd missed that we're nearly of
a size. When they brought you on the ship, I nearly sent them
back again because I didn't recognize you."

Anyel had to think about that. Berrit had been wearing

boots on board the ship, heavy enough to give him a few
inches on Anyel. It had been too long since Anyel had worn
anything but the same size of robe, tailored to him by little
old Father Merrin who never measured but relied on his
fading sight to gauge a man's size. "I suppose I was young
when you saw me last." He shrugged it off and went back to
work on the marginalia of his cure.

"Too young." Berrit's voice was soft.
"Old enough. Didn't we have this argument once?" More

than twenty years ago.

"Oh, yes." Berrit snorted softly. Anyel heard him fasten a

buckle. "Not nearly as many times as I had it with Quin, but I
remember."

Anyel had to stop writing for fear of making a mistake.

"You argued with Quin about me?"

"You would have, if you had been in my position. I owe

you a great deal for healing me. And I did before that. I'm in
your debt, Anyel."

"It was nothing. And you owed me nothing, then or now. I

think I am the one at a disadvantage, still," Anyel said,
making himself go back to writing instead of turning around.
"Before you leave the palace, you should come see me, in
case you need another dose, and so I can see if you are fully
well."

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"As you wish." There was a moment's silence, and then

Anyel heard Berrit's fist against the door just before he
bellowed for the guards. Anyel took a deep breath and kept
writing, even when the chain on the door was loosened and
the guards allowed Berrit to leave, even when the door was
closed and locked again. Berrit wasn't the only one with this
illness, and Anyel couldn't sit around and wait while people
were dying elsewhere.

* * * *

The door opened shortly after Berrit had left, and the

guards let Vannes and a pair of serving girls into Anyel's cell.
"Don't disturb the good Father," Vannes muttered. "Just clean
the room and behave yourselves." Anyel could hear the
whisper of their gowns on the stone floor as they curtsied to
her, and their murmurs of, "Yes, miss."

"Did you bring me bottles?" Anyel's attention was on the

herbs and other ingredients before him. A small bundle of
catalysts would help him make more cure with less magic,
especially if he put some magic in them to begin with.

"And something with which to fill them." Vannes set a

wooden case on the table and Anyel glanced over to see her
open it, revealing rows of little white glass bottles set in
velvet and padding. "They're for storing perfumes, but I
hoped they'd suffice." Their stoppers were also glass,
threaded to twist tight, and a small glass funnel was set to
one side of the rows.

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"They're perfect." Anyel stood and put aside the papers

and herbs. "If I fill some, will you be able to get them into the
women's quarters?"

Vannes looked up at him, her face set in wary, suspicious

lines. "Why?"

"Because I could use more proof than one man that this

works." Anyel started setting up a row of bottles on the desk
before him. "And if you think I'm going to sit around down
here while people die upstairs, you're as mad as..." As mad
as Quin. "Well, you're just mad."

"I'll see they get it," Vannes murmured. She gave Anyel a

tight, little approving smile. "I'll set the bottles, Father. You
pour the cure."

The rest of the cure that Anyel had given Berrit filled eight

bottles. He set two aside for Quin and handed the other six to
Vannes, who folded them carefully inside a handkerchief and
tucked them in one of her many pockets in her long dress.

"Give those to one of the woman physicians. I think it

should work within the hour. Tell her to write down her
observations of the patient." Anyel had no illusions about
being allowed out to go and tend to the women, not at this
point. Besides, he needed to make more of the cure, and
study the illness deeper if the cure were faulty. "I will need
more wine. A cask, not just a bottle, and a deep wooden
basin in which to mix the solution. Also, more of the following
ingredients." He pulled the list from under a bundle of oak
fronds and passed it over.

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"More?" Vannes looked puzzled. "No one else in the palace

is sick; the disease seems confined to the countryside. There
are some sick near the city walls, but..."

"But nothing." Anyel sat down again and turned his back to

her. "It hasn't stopped moving through the countryside, it
won't stop moving here. There's a pause, a lull as it takes
hold, but it will get worse." Anyel waited, but she didn't
retreat. "Ask Quin if you must. He said I could have anything
I wanted."

"When His Highness has a moment, I will. But." Vanne

hesitated and Anyel heard the chime of the keys on her belt,
the sign of her position as chatelaine of Quin's palace. "In the
meantime, it won't do any harm to let you have what you
want. I'll bring more food to you as well. You should eat,
Father."

"Of course. Thank you." Anyel started laying ingredients

out in front of him, trying to decide if he could make
substitutions for some of the more expensive things, like the
seaweed and the palta oil. Both were plentiful on Bisera,
where they were gathered, but they were delicacies on the
mainland, as the Biserans exported little of what they grew or
caught aside from seasonal surpluses of palta, fish, and wine
from a few estates.

* * * *

"Yela, what is this nonsense?" Quin's voice startled Anyel

from his work and he nearly dumped an entire pouch of
tangleweed into a small cask of wine. He turned, twisting the

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pouch closed, to see Quin in the doorway. "You've worked
your magic, and there's no need for this right now."

Quin came in, fastening his brocade tunic at the throat. He

looked as though he were freshly out of bed, ready for riding
or hunting, if the breeches and boots were any indication. His
dark honey hair was carefully twisted and pinned so that it
was out of his face and off his shoulders.

"Come with me. I'm going hunting today. The boars are

running amok."

"There are hundreds of people out there who are sick,

Quin." Anyel rubbed at his eyes and went back to the table to
get the fan-leaf powder. The idea of the disease spreading to
Bisera haunted him. "Thousands."

"And there are people out there who are old, and people

out there who are falling off ladders and breaking their
necks." Quin took the second pouch of powder from Anyel's
hand and tossed it onto the table. "Anyel. You have to be
reasonable about this. We have another chance to be
together, to make up for lost time. You can stay, be my
personal physician. I would prefer no other. Swear to me
you'll stay, so I can bring you out from this place."

A short nap on the chaise had given Anyel a few hours

rest, but it hadn't done anything for his temper.
"Reasonable?" Anyel stepped out of the way as Quin reached
for him. "Reasonable is not locking me up in your gods
damned cellar like some antique you might want to use some
day. Reasonable is not watching your people die when you
could do something about it." Reasonable was not... not Quin,
that was certain.

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"I'm not watching anyone die. Everyone around me is well.

Not everyone is created equal, Anyel," Quin said coolly. "It's
the order of things. Some of us are more useful than others.
And some of us would be wise not to push past the limits of
our usefulness."

Anyel stood there, stunned into silence for a heartbeat.

"This isn't who you used to be, Quin." Twenty years ago,
Anyel was sure Quin would have agreed with him. It was Quin
who did things like giving money to the poor or helping pull a
farmer's mule out of the muddy ditch, even if Anyel had to
remind him once in a while.

"Twenty years ago, I could afford to humor you. I won't

say it wasn't quite heart-warming." Quin looked over the
things on the table and picked up the inkwell. "Now, I cannot.
If word gets out that there is a cure here, the city will be
flooded with refugees, they will be beating down the palace
gates. They would pull you to pieces and take home your
bones." With a flick of his wrist, Quin tossed the inkwell into
the wine cask, ruining the potion. "There would be chaos. You
never did understand what it takes to keep these people
under control."

"Only because my conscience has a louder voice than my

pride," Anyel spat. "It insists that people's lives come before
my convenience."

The back of Quin's hand cracked across Anyel's mouth.

"You'll have no voice at all if you don't learn to control
yourself." Quin's expression was still smooth and pleasant, as
though he were talking about the weather or his favorite dog.
"You're lucky to still have your head."

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Anyel touched his fingers to his lips and they came away

bloody. He thought it should hurt where Quin struck him, but
he felt nothing. Just a strange calm. "Send me back to
Bisera." He made himself look at Quin, at Quin's beautiful
eyes. He drew in the mysteries and wrote behind Quin's eyes
with the ink of his own will. It's the most reasonable thing to
do. You don't want me here. You'll feel better if I'm far away
from you.

"You'll return to Bisera." Quin turned away, wiping Anyel's

blood from the back of his hand with a handkerchief. He
paused in the doorway and, beyond him, Anyel could see the
passive shapes of his guards waiting for him. Looking over his
shoulder at Anyel, he frowned, as though he'd forgotten
something, then shook his head. "Don't think I'm not grateful,
though, Yela. I am. For that, you may return to Bisera."

"Be well, Your Highness."

* * * *

They came and cleared out the little room, taking away

with them all of the materials and papers. Anyel could feel the
paper on which he'd written the cure crinkling against his skin
like a guilty conscience, tucked away under his dressing
gown. When they were gone, he washed and put on the white
robe Berrit had provided him, keeping nothing of Quin's world
with him but the single paper that he had folded in eight and
then folded into a kerchief fastened around his forearm under
his sleeve. The monks of Lochan wore prayers that way,
tucked out of sight, so that the pulse against them was a
constant invocation to their god.

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Anyel wasn't feeling worthy of any such attention from any

person or deity. Once he was clean on the skin, he sat on the
chaise, staring into the fire. He'd done the unthinkable,
broken a fundamental oath, and turned the mysteries against
someone else's will. To sway a person by logic and persuasion
was fair enough, and lying, while frowned upon, was a
necessity of life. What he'd done to Quin was unforgiveable,
no matter what Quin had done to him, or might do in future.

"I suppose this time, you can enjoy the trip."
Anyel hadn't heard the door open, but he didn't startle at

the voice. "Yes, I suppose."

"I'm not dead yet." Berrit held out the obvious like a peace

offering.

"I'm glad." Anyel managed to smile a little, even though it

felt like his face was going to crack, and turned to see Berrit
leaning in the doorway. Berrit was dressed for sea, sturdy
common clothes under a green woolen cloak thrown around
his shoulders and fastened over one with a Kettyl's Hawk
clasp. He looked well, so much better than before, in spite of
the hollowness of his cheeks. He looked like he'd been cut
from rock or redwood, hard and natural. Permanent.

"His Highness says I'm to return you to Bisera." Berrit took

Anyel's cloak from the statue that had been holding it for
days, and shook it out. "Come on, Father." He draped the
cloak around Anyel's shoulders. "Don't make me crack you
over the head a third time."

"The one time I might deserve it," Anyel mumbled. But he

let Berrit guide him out of the room, up the dark, dark stairs,
through a long passage under the palace, and out a side door

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to where a carriage was waiting, shining in the sunlight, along
with a small company of mounted guards. Anyel pulled the
hood of the cloak up over his head, and Berrit handed him up
into the carriage.

"Let's go." Berrit closed the carriage door and then swung

up on a big, rangy, bay horse.

To his surprise, Anyel wasn't alone in the carriage. Vannes

sat opposite him, dressed in travelling clothes, with an
embellished bag on her knees. "Vannes. What are you..."

"I've been let go," she said stiffly. "For my part in taking

the potions to the women's quarters. Her Majesty was kind
enough to suggest I might find employment on Bisera, and
allowed me to go. It's for the best."

There was no house on Bisera that had cause to keep a

chatelaine. Anyel turned the island's geography over in his
mind. There was a house on the western point that a noble
family had used as a second estate, but it had been left for
years, since the lady died there, falling from her horse, and
the nobleman had closed it up. That had been before Anyel's
exile there. The islanders ventured onto the land to pick fruit
from the orchards and vineyards, but the gardens had all
gone wild, and there was none there any longer but a
irascible old gamekeeper and a pack of hounds and a herd of
horses gone wild.

"Vannes, I'm sorry." Anyel felt sick. Taryelin had kept her

on after her sister, Taryelin's first wife and first queen, had
died. It was the only life Vannes had known. The carriage
started with a lurch that made Anyel's stomach flip
disturbingly.

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"Time to see new things," Vannes said staunchly. "I hear

they have long lives there."

"It's true. And..." Anyel had been about to offer her the

protection of the abbey, should she need it. They had some
small holdings, little farms and gardens, that they rented out.
But Anyel couldn't go back to being a monk. Not after what
he'd done to Quin. "...I'm sure you'll make your way there.
You're a good person, Vannes. The Biserans, they can tell
these things."

"I'm sure." Vannes fell silent, watching the city pass by

outside her window. They might never come this way again.
Anyel didn't watch; he closed his eyes and tried to pray.

* * * *

"I don't want... isn't there another..." Anyel stammered as

one of the midshipmen led him into Berrit's quarters again.
The rather pimply young squire was nowhere to be seen.

"It's not acceptable, Father?" The young man looked

worried. "We have some moments before we leave port. I
could send someone to get you..." He looked around the
room. "...better linens. A better bed. What about some holy
books. Wine?"

"No, no." Anyel held up a hand to stop him. "Don't worry.

I'm fine. Please, don't let me keep you from your duties."

"Thank you, Father." The midshipman gave him a grateful

look. "Ring the bell if you need anything."

"Of course." Anyel closed the door behind him. He took off

his cloak, and hung it by the door, then tucked his boots
underneath.

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In the top drawers of Berrit's desk—once Anyel learned his

way around all the little latches and hooks that kept things
secure in high seas—there was paper and pens and an ink
bottle that settled neatly into well carved into the desktop.
Anyel swallowed hard and then picked up a pen. He had to
write his confession and resignation to the Abbot now, before
he managed to talk himself out of doing so, out of fear or
some sense of justification.

Year Quyelin XX, Day One Hundred and Eighty-Seven,

11th Hour. Anyel could hear shouting as the oar boats began
to move the ship, turning her and aiming her back out at sea.
He put his head down and started to write, keeping to the
facts, refusing to suggest that he deserved any lenience. He
didn't. What he'd done to Quin, he'd do again. When thinking
back, it didn't make him ill, it made him burn with the
certainty that it had been the very least that Quin deserved.

They were out on the open sea by the time Anyel finished.

He turned the papers in on themselves carefully, tucking the
instructions for the cure inside, and folded them into a tight
packet with an outer layer of oiled parchment. All he needed
was some twine or some wax. Surely there was some in the
room. When a search of the desk proved fruitless—some wax,
but no seal—Anyel went and, after a moment of hesitation,
opened the drawers and cupboards that held Berrit's
belongings. He tried to pick ones that wouldn't hold anything
personal.

The door opened with a click and a soft creak, startling

Anyel into straightening and knocking his head lightly on a
half-closed drawer above him.

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"Did you need something?" Berrit didn't look upset. He was

carrying a mid-day meal on a tray; coming in, he kicked the
door closed.

"Twine, or a seal."
"Ah." Berrit put the tray down on the desk and wrested a

ring from his finger. "It's mine, but it'll have to do, unless you
want me to get some twine from the galley."

"Thank you. I..." Anyel's words were cut short when Berrit

tossed the heavy ring at him and he had to concentrate to
catch it.

"Let me guess." Berrit watched Anyel light the thick, soft

brown candle. "A scathing chastisement of His Highness? A
long over due retraction of your affections?" He poured Anyel
a glass of wine from a fat-bellied crystal decanter.

"My resignation from the abbey." Anyel watched the candle

burn and willed it to hurry up so there would be wax with
which to seal the letter and get this over. Berrit's ring sat on
the packet of papers, waiting.

"Resignation. Anyel, why?"
"I broke my oaths," Anyel said softly, putting his head in

his hands to try and keep tears from welling up in his eyes.

"With Quin?" Berrit's voice went sharp. "Did he... you could

hardly have refused him. There are penances you can do for
your indiscretions." Berrit took Anyel by the shoulders, his big
hands strong even after the long illness, and drew him up out
of the chair. "Anyel, look at me. Why would you do this? You
love the abbey."

"I used the mysteries against him." Anyel stopped hiding

his face to push Berrit's hands from his shoulders. He ducked

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away, around the desk, putting his back to Berrit and looking
out the stern window. The sea boiled away behind them as
they cut through the blue water faster than a horse could run.
"I wanted to try and save as many as I could. He disagreed.
Ruined my work. I argued with him. He hit me. Said I was
lucky to have my head." Anyel's throat was so tight and he
wrapped his arms around himself and couldn't make himself
let go. "I made him send me away to Bisera. If I didn't..."
Prisoner. Or worse.

"I thought at least from Bisera, I could do something. Find

a way to help people, still." Anyel blinked back tears. "I didn't
want to live in Quin's oubliette. I wanted to go home, such as
it is." Bisera might have been another kind of oubliette, but
Anyel had found himself there, and if the world had forgotten
the boy he'd been before, all the better. Home. Not the
abbey, but maybe... he could find a little house in the fishing
village.

"I'll still have work. I can mend nets. Heal people. The

abbot might be able to find a way to make the cure so that it
could be sent to the mainland, and..."

Berrit's hands on his shoulders, turning him away from the

window, interrupted the flow of babble. "Anyel," Berrit said
gently. Suddenly, Anyel was terrified that Berrit was going to
insist that he return to Oranne, return to confess his sins. The
priests of the church council would break him to be sure that
no control remained on Quin's mind.

"I promise that all I did was ask him to return me to

Bisera." Anyel reached out and his hands tangled in the soft
wool of Berrit's cloak. "I would never do anything to..."

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Berrit silenced him again, this time with his mouth on

Anyel's. It was like being struck by lightning. Anyel was
paralyzed, but he was sure his hair was standing on end. Still.
It was so good. Tender and sweet and chaste.

"I trust you," Berrit said softly, hardly moving away so that

his lips still brushed Anyel's. "Trust me?" Now he withdrew a
little so that Anyel could see his face, his dear, rough face
with all the lines and scars of life drawn on it. "All I have ever
wanted to do is see you treated as you deserve. Even when
you were offensively haughty and stupidly, blindly in love with
someone who thought you were a trinket, I only wanted good
things for you." He punctuated his words with little shakes as
frustration overflowed his self-control. "Please."

"I do." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Anyel

knew it was true. Even if he couldn't see it in Berrit's face so
plainly, the man Berrit was by reputation was one worth
trusting. Beyond that, Berrit had saved his life at a time when
Quin... when Quin would have had him killed. Anyel took a
deep breath and let it out slowly, letting the truth wash away
the lies he'd told himself. "I trust you."

"Good, good." Berrit shook his head and frowned, distress

gathering on his face. He let Anyel go, looking at his own
hands as though he didn't know what they had been up to on
their own. "I'm sorry, Anyel. Father. That was... I'm sorry.
I'm not myself."

"I hope that's not true." Anyel caught Berrit by one wrist.

"I find you tolerable this way."

There were shouts from above as the ship began to change

course, swinging her stern through the wind; both of them

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stopped to listen and make sure she came about fairly. The
swells made her rise and fall and then Anyel was using Berrit
for support as much as trying to keep him from leaving.

The pause let Anyel breathe and think. Clarity was one of

the most expensive gifts he'd ever earned. No wonder people
worshipped Lochan, who saw the truth of everything. The
ship shuddered through as the sails hit the limits of the
sheets and boomed full of the fresh-caught wind, then she
leapt forward joyfully, sending Anyel stumbling into Berrit.

When Berrit caught him up in both arms and kissed him

again, Anyel was hardly going to explain that it was all
because he couldn't keep his footing on a ship. He wrapped
his arms around Berrit's neck and kissed him fiercely. Berrit
picked him up and tumbled him into bed, into the soft safety
of it where the rise and fall of the ship on the waves couldn't
make him stumble again.

For a moment, Anyel was afraid Berrit would leave him

there. But Berrit had only stopped to divest himself of cloak
and knife and sword and anything else that could prove
dangerous in close quarters. He hung them on hooks at the
end of the bed and then took Anyel's reaching hands in his,
letting Anyel draw him down.

"Let me see you." Anyel tugged at the ties of Berrit's linen

tunic. "So I can see how well it worked." Berrit had been so
terribly ill, hardly an inch of his skin without at least one
painful, fevered blister.

"Is that the only reason?" Obediently, Berrit sat up enough

to strip the tunic away, baring smooth, olive skin barely

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touched by the scars from the first illness and affected not at
all by the second.

Anyel had forgotten how to speak. It was only when he

was running his hands over soft skin and muscle and bone
that he remembered. "No," he confessed.

"Then let me tend to the candle and the seal, and you will

have what you want when I return." Berrit kissed him softly
on the mouth, like a promise, and then withdrew to do what
he'd said.

Anyel sat up, back to the wall, to watch Berrit seal the

packet, fighting a twinge of regret. That part of his life was
over. He was free now. Free of Quin. Free of dreaming that
some day he'd be reclaimed and redeemed.

"I'm sorry," Berrit said, breaking into Anyel's haze of

thought.

"What for?"
"Not defending you better. Not telling you the truth all

those years." Berrit came back to sit on the edge of the bed,
elbows on his knees, looking down at his big, scarred hands.
"I could have done better by you, Anyel. Someone should
have."

"I'm not sorry." Anyel hitched his robe so that he could

kneel up and shuffle close enough to put his hand on Berrit's
bare shoulder. "It was what was right for me." He loved
Bisera, for its own merits, nothing more. He wanted to spend
the rest of his life there. "Whatever Gods there are, they
knew what was best for me."

"And what is best for you now?" Berrit turned a little and

reached back to run his fingers over Anyel's mouth where

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Quin had hit him. "To throw away twenty years of devotion
because of an indiscretion?"

"It was more than that. I broke my oath. Something too

serious to simply pray forgiveness over, even if I did believe
in the god to whom I'd be praying." Anyel kissed Berrit's
fingertips. "This is an indiscretion. But that time is over for
me."

"Good." Berrit leaned in and kissed Anyel on the mouth,

tenderly, again and again, between words. "Then let me be
the patron of your studies. Let me be the envoy of your
miraculous cures."

"You would?" It was so hard to think when he was being

kissed like that, but Anyel pulled the scattered herd of his
thoughts back together and made sense of them. "You
could... so many people are ill."

"And they will get well." Berrit nudged Anyel and Anyel

found himself sprawling back into the pillows. "For my sins,
Quin made me commander of his armada, you know that.
What you need carried," Berrit said softly, crawling up the
bed to lean over Anyel, "I will carry for you. As far as it must
go."

"Will you come back to Bisera?" Anyel was breathless, as

though he'd been running. The idea of not seeing Berrit again
was achingly terrible.

"My mother had a house there, above the sea. My father

built it for her, because she missed her home too much. They
called it Prasynne, for the gardens. It's been closed since she
died, but it's time, I think, to open it again." Berrit smiled as
he leaned in to kiss Anyel on the mouth.

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"That's why you picked Bisera." Anyel put a hand on

Berrit's chest to push him back gently. "You knew it."

"I did." Berrit resisted being pushed away and leaned in for

another kiss. "I couldn't put you just anywhere. Even if I
thought you needed a good spanking and a few years to think
about what a fool you were. You were still a better person
than almost anyone else I knew. Better than Quin. Better
than me."

Anyel made a face at him for that last and Berrit laughed,

then kissed him again, and this time, he didn't seem inclined
to stop.

* * * *

Anyel stood on a weed-choked marble terrace, watching

the horizon grow dark. Behind him, in the house, he could
hear Vannes' voice raised, chiding, and some very
unrepentant barking. Not all the doors in the house closed
firmly and the little dog, Pepy, had taken to finding a way in.
She had, in fact, followed Anyel all the way up the winding
road from the main port to the abbey and then on to
Prasynne.

Berrit had stayed behind to carry the first cures and letters

from the abbot to the mainland where they would be given to
the abbeys of Lochan and to the hedgewitches of the lowlands
and the hearthwitches of the mountain country. Passed on
from hand to hand, they would be so widespread that no one,
in any one place, could own it all.

Anyel and Vannes and the hired men and women had

come to restore Prasynne to its former state—or as close to it

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as they could come before winter set in this year. The
seasons were changing already, summer giving way to
autumn. There would be a few rooms fit for living and the
fireplaces and chimneys would be rebuilt. Enough room was
made for Berrit's men to sleep in the guard house when he
came in on his ship.

There were even plumes of smoke rising from beyond the

trees, the first of the little cotholds were occupied by a few
families that chose to follow "Pere" Anyel to his new home.
They still called him Pere and nothing would dissuade them. It
wasn't far from the main port to Prasynne; only the neglect of
the road and the rise and fall of a ridge of trees made it seem
so.

But today, Anyel wasn't watching for smoke or workers or

even the little dog. He had his eyes on the sea far below and
a mile away. His days of having nothing to look for had
passed. The falcon cried overhead and circled down to land on
the terrace rail.

"You saw him?" Anyel was irrationally flattered that she'd

changed hunting grounds to stay near him. The falcon bobbed
her head and sidled closer along the rail, so that Anyel could
pet her and scratch the itchy spot on her wing. For all that
he'd been raised with no religion other than the mysteries his
mother practiced, he had developed a fondness for Lochan, or
at least the idea of that the god was present. "We should go
meet him."

By the time Anyel made his way down to the cove where

the ships made landfall, he would be able to see the ship
coming in. To his surprise, he missed Berrit. He'd thought the

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

attraction and the convenience of the relationship would be
the whole of it, but he'd been wrong. Monastery life had been
ill-preparation for such things.

The notes they sent by messenger bird—sometimes

several a day—had brought them closer together than Anyel
had expected. He found himself tracing the words with his
fingers as though he could feel Berrit's touch there. In his
head, he could hear Berrit's voice when he read the letters,
again and again. It never wore thin.

They had three horses in the stable and four fit for the

plough out in the paddock. They had ten cows and a bull, a
small herd of sheep and a ram, chickens that ran in the yard.
It was a tiny seed of an estate, but it would grow. In the
stable, Anyel saddled two horses while Pepy made a warm
nest in the hay on the floor. In a thick bag, he had hot mead
in a padded wineskin, meat rolls, and baked potatoes still in
their clay shells. It would be a decent meal, if he had to wait
a while. On the spare horse, he packed the food, a lantern,
and an extra cloak.

The monks' robes had long-since gone by the wayside. The

last time he'd worn anything like them, Anyel had been
bidding Berrit goodbye. Now, in warm silk and wool breeches,
high boots, and a thick tunic under a heavy cloak, Anyel was
dressed to ride, like any rural lord. He tugged on his gloves
and swung up on the horse he'd named Gall, for the gelding's
scarred knees. A lack of beauty hadn't swayed his affections
in years.

As he rode out, the falcon came down to perch on the

empty saddle. The stallion, Surrige, after the waves before a

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

storm, put his ears back at her but didn't complain. Anyel
turned to see Vannes waving from the kitchen door. In a year
or two, they'd have gardens all the way along the road to the
gate. Prasynne would be like a garden within the garden of
Bisera.

The rising wind sang through the palta groves and the

pitayas orchard. Anyel was following the broken road around
a scrubby stand of cedars with tiquisque plants flourishing
around them, when he heard a distant yap. He whistled
sharply and the falcon took to the air. Pepy was huffing
furiously when she finally caught up to Anyel.

"Well." Anyel leaned over and held out his hands. "You

were the one who wanted a nap."

Pepy barked, but jumped into his arms anyway. She made

a good little travelling companion, sitting across Anyel's
saddle just in front of him with her nose peeping through the
part in his cloak. She was also a good hot water bottle on
cooler days. The morning had come in warm, but the wind
rode in from the sea like a herd of ghost horses, chilling
everything in their path.

By the time Anyel rode to where the broken road turned

whole again and came curving out of the cedar forest that
thatched the coastline, he could see white sails on a dark ship
running hard before the wind. He nudged Gall with his heels
and they clattered down the road with Surrige behind them.
The falcon swept by them and out to sea to meet the ship
coming in.

The piers were broken in many places and the pilings were

rotted and crumbled; except for one, the docks canted and

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

dipped under the waves. But, for Anyel, one was good
enough. He stood where the pier met the shore, holding Pepy
under one arm and the reins for Gall and Surrige in the other
hand, waiting for Berrit's ship, Tagetes, to come in. He had
been waiting for this feeling for so long, for the wrong person.

The wind threw waves up onto the stone piers and the

wooden docks that remained. Tagetes shortened her sails as
she drew near, the booms banging as the sails were gathered
up and tied down. She was coming in so fast Anyel thought
his heart would stop, but then her bow swung out at the last
minute, the sailors threw bumpers over the sides and she
came to rest slowly, drifting to a halt with the wind pressing
her close against the dock.

Anyel was holding his breath for fear that all of this would

be some illusion that would fall to pieces when he saw Berrit
again. Pepy squirmed—he was holding her too tight—and so
he let her go run and sniff. He stood still, like he was frozen,
and waited until, at last, a man came down the gangplank
and broke away from the rest. Anyel didn't need to see his
face to know who it was. Even at a distance, he could tell.

"You're here." Berrit sounded almost surprised, but mostly

pleased. Thumbs hooked in his belt, he made his way toward
Anyel at a lazy pace. When he tossed his head to get his hair
out of his face, Anyel could see him smile. The work went on
around Tagetes, but it felt like they were alone.

Anyel swallowed down the lump in his throat. "Welcome

back," he managed to say.

Berrit drew near, looking serious. "Let me look at you."

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

Anyel shook his hair out of his face and stepped back so

Berrit could get a good look at him. "Yes?"

"Just..." Berrit shook his head, still smiling. "It's good to be

back."

"I brought a meal, in case you were hungry." Anyel offered

his hand tentatively and Berrit took it without hesitation.

"Thank you." Berrit squeezed his hand gently. "I am

hungry," he admitted.

"Do you want to eat now? I can..." He got only that far

before Berrit reeled him in with a tug that nearly took him off
his feet and into Berrit's arms. "...or not."

Berrit kissed him hard, with a low growl. "Not hungry for

food," he corrected. "Gods, I left you a monk too long."

"I... oh." Anyel couldn't help the way his cheeks burned.

"No, you didn't." He leaned in and kissed Berrit shamelessly,
seducing him with everything he could remember. They had
done little more than this before, talking for hours instead,
lying in each other's arms, comforting each other, learning.
When Anyel finally pulled away, he was trembling. "I'm
definitely hungry, too. Let's go home and..." He ran out of
words, suddenly shy.

Berrit kissed him gently on the cheek. "Is it home now?"
Anyel nuzzled against Berrit's cheek and then let his head

rest on Berrit's shoulder. "If you come back to it, it is," he
said, just loud enough for Berrit to hear him over the wind.

"If you're here, I'll come back." Berrit held him close and

they stood there for a long time, interrupted only by the huff
of the horses and the cry of the falcon above, until Pepy came

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

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running back—sodden—to hide under the hem of Anyel's
cloak. "Always."

"Then let's go home." Anyel stole one last kiss before

taking Gall's reins and swinging up into the saddle. While
Berrit mounted Surrige, Anyel leaned over and let Pepy jump
up. He sighed and scrubbed her with his cloak before settling
her in place. Once she was settled Anyel reached over and
took the bag of food from Berrit's saddle. They could eat as
they rode, filling one kind of hunger.

They made good time going uphill, pushed onward by the

incoming storm; the cold wind blew too noisy and
mischievous for them to talk. But as they reached the gates—
the rusted open gates that would have to wait for summer to
be repaired—the wind split the clouds apart just long enough
for the sun to spill down over Prasynne, lighting the whole of
the little estate up in glorious gold and green. The falcon—
perhaps some day Anyel would name her—came down to rest
on his shoulder with a contented whistle.

"I think she says welcome home," Anyel said, looking over

at Berrit. To his surprise, Berrit wasn't looking at Prasynne or
the sky or even the bird. Berrit's eyes were on him alone, as
though Berrit could find nothing better to look at around him.

"Welcome home, Anyel." Berrit nudged Surrige closer to

Gall and leaned over to steal a kiss from Anyel's lips.
"Everything of mine is yours, if you'll have it."

Anyel looked around him as the wind whipped the horses

back into a walk. "As long as it's yours," he said, reaching out
for Berrit's hand. "As long as it's yours, I'll keep it."

End

Exiled to Paradise: The Nine of Pentacles

by Anah Crow

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